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AGAINST 


THE STREAM 


THE STOR Y OF 


A HEROIC AGE IN ENGLAND. 

r^fruUU.) <^.. ^0.^1 

BY THE AUTHOR OF 

“THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY,” “DIARY OF KITTY 
TREYELYAN,” ETC. 


NEW YORK : 

DODD & MEAD, Publishers, 
762 BROADWAY. 

1873- 


.G-3S 

Kcfe 

£ 


^UTJJOR'S EDITION. 

Bequest 

Albert Adsit Clemons 
Aug. 24, 1938 
(Not available for exchange) 



Against the Stream. 


CHAPTER L 

O one who has not tried, can imagine 
what a pleasant thing it is to be, unde- 
niably and consciously, an old woman. 

I mean, of course, literally not sym- 
bolically. 

To have the whole landscape of life behind 
you, and below you. To see, now and then, in- 
dications through the mists and shadows, why the 
path wound here through barren, empty wastes, 
and there through thorny thickets ; in one place 
scaled recklessly the perilous rocky steep, in an- 
other crept in weary windings along monotonous 
slopes it had seemed easier to clear at a bound ; or 
why, just there, it broke off in a sudden chasm, 
which at the time threatened to end its meaning 
and waste its work altogether. T^ catch some ex- 
planatory hints of a training of eye and nerve for 
higher work hereafter ; some illuminated glimpses 



8 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of fellow-travellers, to be succored just at that per- 
plexing turn, and nowhere else. To have the 
long uphill all but over, and to find “ the upland 
slopes of duty” all but merging in the “ table-land 
of glory,” as they do, not for the exceptional hero 
only, but for all who follow the footprints of the 
Master’s feet, if the Master’s words are true ; if 
heroism means, as He showed, not exceptional 
achievement, but self-surrendering obedience ; and 
glory, as He is showing now, not some vague rep- 
etition of earthly pomps with a larger than 
earthly audience, but the expansion and illumin- 
ation of every faculty, in a life fuller than the 
intensest life below, for a service higher, because 
nearer Him. 

To watch such explanatory broken lights steal- 
ing over the past that reaches back so far ; — to 
catch the dawn of unbroken, satisfying light on 
the future, now so near. Kest here, in the ac- 
quiescence in powers enfeebled, unequal to fresh 
enterprise, that have done their work and can 
undertake no more, save such stray quiet kind- 
nesses as may come to us demanding to be done ; 
rest there, in the hope of powers renewed, so that 
their exercise shall become once more a joy, Such 
as it was to move or breathe in childhood. 

A little faint insight through the learning and 
unlearning of the years, — through their tenderer 
tolerance, and larger judgments, into the patience 
of Him who has been teaching and long-suffering 
through the ages. A strong and ever-growing 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


9 


trust, through some discords resolved, and some 
despairs clashed into hopes ; through some mis- 
understood things explained, and some wrongs 
righted or turned into secret instruments of mar- 
tyrdom, through much forgiven and something 
overcome — in the purpose of Him “ who willeth 
not that any should perish,” not because sin is a 
mere passing disease of the childhood of humanity, 
or a mere passing discord of the harmonies of the 
universe, but because “ He willeth that all men 
should repent.” A bright and ever brightening 
hope in a heaven which shall be the seed-plot of 
many heavens,, through that Death which is the 
seed of infinite life. 

To find the “ great multitude no man can num- 
ber,” the “ majority” to which we go, no longer 
an overwhelming dazzle of supernatural light, a 
crowd of unknown unindividualized angelic faces, 
but the blessed company where the dearest eyes 
wonder and smile, and the most familiar voices 
are heard, in that speech at once so tender and so 
high we know not what better to call it than 
song. 

These things are worth waiting for, worth 
growing old for, worth having this world emptied 
for. 

Can I say that ? 

Hot always ; not most healthily, I think, in 
moments of ecstatic forseeing, but in those mo- 
ments, more frequent when it is given . to me, in 
some simple ways, to fill up the measure of their 


10 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


service who have gone before, and so to feel that 
after all, this world is indeed not empty to me, 
though my best have gone on out of sight. 

So vividly they stand before me, those old 
times, now that the morning mists and the noon- 
day haze are over, and the mists of night have 
scarcely come ; so clearly do the old voices sound 
back to me in the quiet, especially from the ear- 
liest days, and so different is the world whence 
they come from this around me now, that I feel 
attracted to sit down and picture them, with just 
as little effort as if I were not making pictures at 
all, hut simply tracing outlines on a series of mir- 
rors, and transforming them thus, by some magic, 
into a series of stained-glass windows. 

So it seems to me. 

But then, of course, I always see the clear liv- 
ing mirror behind my outlines ; and how far the 
stained glass represents it to others I cannot know. 

It is worth while to do it, for myself at least, 
for I have lived through one of our country’s 
heroic ages, and as it seems to me, have seen some 
of the heroes not very far off. 

And, in looking back over my life, if there 
are any principles which have been its joy and 
strength, and which I could wish to see more the 
joy and strength of others, they are these. 

Christianity is to me, and ever has been, since 
I learned to live by it, not so much a fresh mys- 
tery, as a revelation of mysteries — a “mystery 
shown ; ” not a clouding, but an unveiling ; not a 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


11 


new riddle, whose glory is that being the divinest 
it is the deepest, hut a solution of many riddles, 
although indeed not yet of all. 

The world and its great history are full of 
darkness ; society and our own little histories are 
full of darkness, and much of this Christianity has 
left unconquered and unexplained. 

But at the heart and centre of all is not dark- 
ness, but light ; not only a mind infinite and in- 
comprehensible, but a heart that loves and speaks ; 
not a subtle setter-forth of riddles which humanity 
has to solve at its peril, or perish, but a patient 
Teacher of babes, to whom His human creatures 
are dear ; not an inexorable medical examiner test- 
ing candidates for appointments, but the Physi- 
cian healing the sick ; not the Sphinx, but the 
Word. 

Truth obvious indeed, and at the root of all 
Christian theology (is not the absence of it practi- 
cally Atheism ? ) yet from which it seems to me 
most Christian theologies are forever departing 
into labyrinths of our own making, and ever 
needing to be recalled. 

And flowing from this is another principle, 
which has strengthened me to live and hope. The 
light, and not the darkness, are meant to conquer, 
in individuals, as in the whole. Human character 
is not immutable, like the instincts of animals, 
but corrigible and perfectible'; perfectible in the 
best to the end, corrigible in the worst to the 


12 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


end ; capable of radical change, capable of infinite 
growth. 

Again, truth most obvious, if Christianity is 
true ; yet one which in the apparent fixedness of 
character in all men after early youth, and the 
apparent invincibility of small faults in good men, 
in wrongs from others, in struggles with myself, 
I, at least, have not found it easy to hold ; which, 
indeed, I should have found it impossible to hold, 
but for constant recurrence to that first great truth 
which is its source. 

Faith in God, unbounded ; and for that reason, 
hope for men unbounded also. 

Are these things so easy to hold in a world 
where the chaos of a French revolution can whirl 
on for a century without evolving a creation ? — 
where the Church of land after land, and age after 
age, has succeeded too often in silencing its noblest 
men? — where a Las Casas originated the slave- 
trade, and the abolition of slavery has not at all 
events resulted in a planter’s Paradise of grateful 
industrious laborers ? — where a century of philan- 
thropic efforts leaves our English legislation pow- 
erless to lift off the accumulating weight of pau- 
perism, and a millennium of Christianity leaves 
English Christians powerless to stem the increasing 
flood of intemperance ? — where in our own little 
worlds all of us have seen the race not always won 
by the swift, nor the battle by the brave ? 

Do we not need in such a world a faith in 
God which, whatever is doubtful and whatever 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


13 


is dark, leaves it not doubtful that “ in Him is no 
darkness at all.'” 

Do we not need a hope for man that has its 
root deeper than in any man, or in any history, 
even in Him who loving most has suffered most, 
who “ underwent and overcame,” Whose life was 
serving, Whose victory was in being vanquished, 
Whose reigning is serving, Whose reward for the 
service of His own is to serve better, Whose work 
in the midst of the throne is the old familiar shep- 
herd’s work of “ leading” and feeding, Whose 
triumph in the day of his joy will be to “gird 
Himself and come forth, and serve ? ” 

And this leads me to the third living principle 
of my life : belief in a heaven which is not a 
contradiction, but a completion of true Christian 
life below ; in a master whose promise is, not a 
rewarding of seventy years of toil by an eternity 
of luxurious repose ; nor an avenging of seventy 
years of abasement by an eternity of exaltation ; 
nor a compensation for seventy years of service ' 
and suffering by an eternity of triumphal pomp 
and regal state ; but a training by the numbered 
years of imperfect work here for an eternity of 
blessed work, unhindered and unwearied ; by sev- 
enty years of gradual deliverance from the bondage 
of self, not for an eternity of the gratification of 
self intellectual or spiritual, but for an eternity of 
the only liberty worth having, the liberty, not of 
the rights of independant atoms, but of the duties 
of a mutually dependent brotherhood, in the pre- 


u ' 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


sence of the Father whom all obey, and on Whom 
all depend ; the glorious liberty of love, the neces- 
sity of whose nature, like His who is its source and 
end, is to give, and in giving, before and in all its 
gifts to give itself, giving and receiving in that end- 
less interchange which ensures growth, and which 
only is worthy to be called life. 

A belief I have found not without practical im- 
portance : since earnests and foretastes of our prom- 
ised inheritance are sure to be converted by the 
way, and it makes not a little differancc to our 
practical life whether we consider the truest symbol 
ajid foretaste of heaven to be the contemplation of 
toiling cities from suburban paradises, or the suc- 
coring and serving the poorest creature toiling in 
those city streets. 

If I have had any power in my life to “ lift up 
hands that hang down,” to revive now and then 
hope for humanity in some veterans (to whom I 
have been as a child) worn-out with the disap- 
pointments of many victories which have failed 
to accomplish all they seemed to promise ; or in 
some fallen creatures, worn-out with the despair 
of many defeats, it is to such simple and obvious 
principles as these that I owe it. 

And yet, how vain to think we know the 
springs of the influences which have moulded us, 
or through which we have acted on others; so 
subtle are they, so simple, so subtly combined, 
so finely distinct ? 

Deeper even than its deepest principles is our 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


15 


religion, rooted not in a principle, but in the Per- 
son we adore; and, since the divine history is 
ever deeper and wider than all the theologies and 
.philosophies drawn from it, to me, doubtless, as 
to all, from the wisest to the simplest, all true 
power to live, or to help to live, has come from 
Him who, while in Himself revealing the Father, 
understood and saved the “sinner” who washed 
His feet, hoped in and saved the Disciple w t 1io 
denied Him loved and saved the Pharisee who 
“persecuted Him,” Whose presence makes heaven, 
and must make a heaven like Himself 

We may review or analyze our life into prin- 
ciples, as we analyze our food into alkalies, salts 
and acids ; but no chemical combination of alkalies, 
salts, and acids yet invented will keep us alive. 

Principles must, after all, be rooted in affec- 
tions : life can only be nourished by life. 




CHAPTER II. 



“ Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses. 

With light upon him from his father’s eyes.” 

HITCH recollections of early childhood with 
me are all too soon broken in upon. 

Yet to me also the world began with 
Paradise. I can dimly recall such a zone 
of tenderest sunlight, such a sense of being watched 
and delighted in, and brooded and purred over; 
and played with ; such a golden time of kisses 
and coaxings, and tender foldings up at night, and 
laughing wakings up in the morning, 

And then, succeeding it, a time of silence and 
darkness and cold ; of being hushed and kept 
quiet because something which had made the sun- 
shine of the home was gone, and something else 
which needed that lost sunshine more than any 
had come, and must be cherished and watched 
and kept alive with such artificial warmth as the 
world can make for motherless babes, — leaving at 
the moment little warmth and light to spare any- 
where for me. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


17 


A dark confused chaotic time, “ without form, 
and void in looking back, I can scarcely tell 
whether it lasted days, or months, or years; a 
time when God had made for me no lights, greater 
or lesser, to divide the light from the darkness. 

So my first associations with my brother, my 
own brother Piers, who was afterwards the life of 
my life, were rather of something subtracted than 
something added, rather of a great loss, than the 
great gift he was. 

I think we shall find it thus with many of our 
best gifts often. 

After this comes first into my recollection a 
pervading and overshadowing memory of clothes. 

Before, it was like being a bird or a flower. 
But connected with that dark chaotic time, comes 
sense of being in a state of existence where one 
had always to carry about things to be taken care 
of, which one was in some vague and uneasy way 
identified with and responsible for, and which the 
people in the nursery who loved one most, felt to 
be in some sense of more importance than oneself 
and yet the very nature of which appeared to be 
that the influences which were pleasant to their 
wearer were pernicious to them. 

It was, I suppose, the form in which my spirit 
had to struggle into the consciousness of matter, 

“ Obstinate questionings. 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized.” 

How many of the lessons incident to the “ shades 
2 


18 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of the prison-house ” came to me through my 
clothes ! — through that portion of the material 
world which was to me so essentially part of the 
“ Not me,” and was evidently regarded by those 
around me as an integral portion of the u Me ! ” 

I can remember now the delighted sense of 
freedom with which, one fine Sunday afternoon, 
I had crept, unnoticed, out of the garden door, 
with my faithful companion, our great black New- 
foundland dog, Pluto, up the green hill outside the 
garden wall to the edge of the brook beyond, and 
was enjoying at once the joys of liberty and of 
tyranny in making him plunge into the water and 
fetch me a stick as I had seen my father do. I 
remember now the half-remonstrant, half-conde- 
sending way in which the grand creature yielded 
to my little imperiousnesses, and then, landing his 
freight, shook himself in a storm of sparkling 
drops over me and my new frock. 

And I also remember a certain calm philoso- 
phical interest (which ought in any consistent 
biography to have presaged a genius for scientific 
investigation) wherewith I was observing that the 
drops did not penetrate my crape but lay on it, 
round and sparkling, when nurse burst upon us 
with baby in her arms, and a wail on her lips. 

“ Bless the maid ! what will she be after next ? 
Miss Bride, Miss Bride, you contrary child, how 
can you be so unfeeling as to forget your new 
crape, and your blessed mother, and Sunday, and 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


19 


everything, and romp about like a beggar’s brat 
with that great brute of a dog ? ” 

A speech which left me in such a bewilder- 
ment of images and injustices that I was too per- 
plexed to cry or to defend myself, until the dog, 
his affections getting the better of his tact, shook 
himself in a rapture of welcome over baby and 
nurse, and thereby drew on himself a blow which 
sent him away whining in his inarticulate way ; 
whilst I, tearfully protesting that Pluto was not a 
brute nor I a brat, and that I had not forgotten 
Sunday, for father had only just given me my 
Sunday gingerbread, was dragged down the steps 
of the dear old garden, from terrace to terrace, 
whining in my half-articulate way. 

And I also remember to this day, my father 
standing at the door of the Summer parlor, which 
opened on the garden, welcoming me with open 
arms, caressing and comforting me, and saying 
that “ Clothes did not matter at all if I would only 
be his own dear little bride, and not cry.” 

But clothes did matter, as I knew too well in 
my feminine experience, and as nurse protested, 
“How should master know about clothes, poor 
dear soul, who had neither to make nor to mend, 
nor to starch nor to iron ? Men, the wisest of them, 
always talked as if clothes grew upon children like 
fur upon kittens.” 

They mattered, indeed, so much to me, that I 
had never any difficulty at all in receiving the 
narrative of Genesis connecting clothes with the 


20 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


fall rather than the creation of man, as a most 
rational explanation of the nature of things, being 
already quite convinced from my own history that 
they could never have been originally intended 
as essentials in any beneficent scheme of the 
universe. 

Only, Piers and I used in after years fre- 
quently to lament that the primitive institution of 
skins had not been adhered to. 

Also, I suspect, clothes had much to do with 
that next step which made so great a change in 
our lives. 

I have little doubt it was a sense of his inca- 
pacity for contending with the difficulties spring- 
kig, not from the characters of his children, but 
from their clothes, feminine and infantine, with all 
the feminine care and attendance incident there- 
unto, that induced him to place at the head of his 
house the discreet and sober-minded gentlewoman 
who became our stepmother ; clothes, I mean, in 
the larger sense, — conventionalities, customs, pro- 
prieties. 

The reign of Clothes certainly did not cease 
with my stepmother. Only the signification of 
the world extended. Conventionalities, customs, 
proprieties, all the ritual of life, these were her 
standard measures, her household gods, her sacred 
Scriptures, or at least her tradition of the elders, 
which brought them down to practice ; her Talmud 
if not her Pentateuch. With most of us, I sup 
pose, our practical commentaries are unwritten. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


21 


On the Upper Olympus, doubtless, with her as 
with others, safe enthroned the serene far-off ortho- 
dox divinities, but by the hearth were acknowd- 
edged two presiding powers, one deprecated as the 
root of mischief, and the other honored with daily 
incense and libation. Her evil genius was En 
thusiasm ; her protecting divinity, Moderation. 

To understand the Bible or anything properly, 
she would have considered that every text should 
be underlined with “ Let everything be done 
decently and in order,” and a Let your moderation 
be known unto all men.” 

With her, sin was doing anything too vehe- 
mently ; heresy, believing anything too intensely ; 
justice between contending parties was thinking 
every one equally wrong ; charity, thinking every 
one equally right ; the Christian warfare an armed 
neutrality ; truth the residuum after the extraction 
of all extreme opinions ; paradise, the place where 
all exaggerated ideas and characters are either 
absent or kept quiet. 

At least such was the impression she made on 
me in the exaggerations of my childish imagina- 
tion; for hers was a moderation which always 
tempted me into extremes, and it is only later 
that I learned to be just to her. She was as kind 
as any one can be without sympathy, as just as 
any one can be without imagination. She ad- 
hered as faithfully to the golden rule, “ As ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye also to 
them,” as any one can do who has no conception 


22 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of the differences between men, between the 
“they” and the “you,” no idea of the patient 
study of circumstance and character which the 
true fulfilling of the precept involves. 

In later years, moreover, we grew to under- 
stand each other better ; as she and I both learned, 
I trust, something from each other, and more 
from life. 

And in earlier years, I can see now, if not the 
good she did me, at least something of the evils 
from which she kept me. 

It is good for us all to have some ice in our 
lives. It makes the air fresher, and restrains the 
enthusiasm which is meant to enrich the summers 
and middle levels with living waters and life- 
giving soil, from overflowing too early in the 
spring time on the higher levels, and so evapora- 
ting in mists of sentiment, or being lost in marshes 
of vague good intention. 

Much fond and foolish talk there was, no 
doubt, in the nursery, when it was announced 
that Mr. Danescombe, my father, was about to 
marry Miss Euphrasia Weston. 

Faltering exhortations were addressed to me 
by nurse as to the duties of our new relationship 
to the good lady who was coming to be our “ new 
mother ; ” congratulations whose compassionate 
tones made me interpret them into condolences. 
For children, like dogs, read speech as if it were 
music, by tones rather than by words. 

The only words of her exhortations which 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


23 


made any impression on me, were those terrible 
promises of a “ new mother.” To me they were 
what to a devout Jew might have been the prom- 
ise of a 16 new God.” 

In those days the French words, vulgarized by 
bad nursery pronunciation into papa and mamma, 
which would be so intolerable if they were not 
hallowed to two or three generations by the lisp- 
ings of baby lips, had not yet been introduced into 
England, or at least had not penetrated to our 
social level in our little country town. There 
was, therefore, no convenient intermediate con- 
ventional term, expressive rather of position than 
relationship. 

And the sacred name, mother, was not, in my 
Protestant childhood, distributed in the liberal 
manner since the fashion among any benevolent 
ladies who undertake the charge of young girls, 
good or naughty. In those days women only 
became mothers through a mother’s anguish and 

j oy. 

To me “ mother” meant one only incompar- 
able love, one only irreparable loss; love which 
had loved me, me as I was, not any goodness or 
beauty in me, not my clothes nor my behavior, 
but me, her little, helpless, longing, clinging 
Bride ; loss which had left my childhood, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, one long empty craving, 
“ feeling after if haply I might find ” wings to 
brood over me, arms to fold me like hers. 

But now nurse seemed to expect me to transfer 


24 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


that dear lost name in this easy way to an un- 
known quantity, as if it meant nothing, like a 
nonsense nursery rhyme ; as if life meant nothing 
but a “ make-believe” play with dolls. 

I could not have done so even to an old doll. 
Yet to remonstrate with any one who could have 
had the want of perception to propose such a 
thing was, I instinctively felt, as useless as trying 
to explain the mysteries of property to Pluto. 

I cried myself to sleep silently that night, in 
one of those unutterable agonies of childhood. 
Happily childish agonies do not drive sleep away ! 

And the next morning I awoke and began my 
vain tears again, but made no moan Or complaint, 
until nurse finding I did not get on with my bread 
and milk, began one of her half-caressing half- 
querulous remonstrances. 

“ What ails the child ? Miss Bride, you are 
getting quite beyond poor old nurse. And so no 
doubt others have thought. Maybe the new lady 
will manage better.” 

Then I broke out into one gasping sob, and 
said, “ must I call the new lady mother ? ” 

u Sure enough, child, sure enough ! What 
would poor dear master say % ” 

“ Did father say that ? ’’ 

“ Who would make so bold as to ask him ? 
Never mind, poor lamb, never mind ; what’s the 
name ? The name's nothing.” 

. To me the name was unutterably much. But 
I was consoled by perceiving that it was plain 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


25 


nurse had no sentence on the matter from my 
father ; and I secretly resolved to ask him myself. 

To me the name was everything. To use it 
falsely was, I felt in some dim way, to bring a lie 
into my life, or rather to sap all significance out 
of the words falsehood and truth, to make all lan- 
guage, all sacred words and names lose their dis- 
tinctive meaning and become mere interchangea- 
ble hollowness. That is to say, this is what I now 
know my instinctive revulsion meant. 

The very next time that I sat on my father’s 
knee, and could get my face well hidden on his 
breast, with desperate courage I began — 

“ Must I call her mother ? ” 

His hands trembled as they stroked my hair, 
and his lips as he kissed me, and I couid hear that 
his voice was half choked as he said — 

“ Who, little Bride ? . What does my darling 
mean ? ” 

“ The new lady,” I said, without lifting my 
head. 

He put me down, and paced hastily up and 
down the room ; and then he said, in what seemed 
to me a very cold and absent voice, “ I will ask 
her.” 

But then again suddenly he seized me in his 
arms and pressed me to his heart, and I felt his 
tears as he said — 

“ Little Bride, my darling little Bride, you are 
not afraid of me ? I am only bringing some one 
home to take care of you and baby.” 


26 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


And so he fully believed, my poor father. 
Bewildered by the advice of some, and the gossip 
of others, and the well-meant querulousness of 
nurse, and* the various feminine and infantine com- 
prehensibilities of baby and of me, he was bring- 
ing home a sage and sober-minded new lady who 
talked good English, which nurse did not, and 
was a good economist, which he was not, to pre- 
side over his household, his children, and himself, 
to provide us with costumes and catechisms, with 
clothes, intellectual, moral, and material. 

I am not describing typical relationships or 
characters. Relationships and characters are not 
to be so easily classified into types. Second mar- 
riages are as different as first marriages, and step- 
mothers as different as mothers or mothers-in-law. 
But our country town was not a normal commu- 
nity, nor was mine a normal life. And this was 
my experience. 

The next day my father kissed me very ten- 
derly when I went to bed, and said gravely, 

“Miss Weston does not wish my little Bride 
to call her anything that is not strictly correct. 
You may call her Mrs. Danescombe. She would 
like it.” 

I felt so relieved, and so grateful to the new 
lady for the relief, I could almost have welcomed 
her. I suppose a dim hope came to me that she 
would after all understand me. 

A week after that my father went away for a 
day or two. In those days wedding journeys had 


AGAINST TEE STUEAM. 


27 


not been introduced. He was married in the 
neighboring town where Miss Euphrasia was stay- 
ing, and the next day he brought her home, and 
we were summoned to greet her. 

She stooped down graciously and gave me her 
cheek to kiss ; and she spoke in a high-pitched 
caressing tone, supposed to suit the infantine taste, 
to Piers, and made a movement *as if she would 
have taken him in her arms and kissed him. But 
she seemed to find her dress a little in the way. 
She wore a drooping large-brimmed hat with a 
feather, and ruffles and lappets and laces in various 
places, and I believe she felt shy with the child, 
which he with a child’s instinct of course perceiv 
ed ; and concluding she had no right of possession 
in him, he turned from her with a little pout, and 
a little quiver of the lips, to me. 

I saw her color rise a little, and I felt rather 
than saw a slight uneasy frown on my father’s 
face. I knew that things were going wrong ; and 
then all at once something motherly seemed to 
wake up in my own heart (I do not know what 
else to call it), a dim feeling that I was not there 
to be taken care of, but to take care of other peo- 
ple, of Piers and father, and even in some sense 
of Mrs. Danescombe. And I folded my arms 
around my little brother, and stretched out his 
little hands and mine together towards her, and 
then I seemed to feel father’s frown relax to a 
smile, and in a moment we were both caught up 
and half smothered in his arms, and enveloped in 


28 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


a comprehensive embrace in which Mrs. Danes- 
combe was in some way involved. 

Then afterwards father hastily left the room, 
as if he had finished the reconciliation scene in a 
play, his sanguine nature quite satisfied that all 
was going right; and Mrs. Danescombe, after 
bestowing a toy on Piers, and a new London doll 
on me, was quite content to leave Piers to my 
guardianship, while she smoothed herself down 
before the small cut Venetian glass in the oaken 
frame over the old high-carved chimney-piece. 

And I remember sitting in the window-seat 
with my arms around Piers, altogether grave and 
happy with that new feeling of motherliness. 
We did not touch our toys, but sat gravely con- 
versing; so that when father returned, cheerily 
rubbing his hands, he looked a little disappointed 
to see the new gifts neglected, and said to me 
half reproachfully : 

“ Does not my little Bride care for her beauti- 
ful new doll ? ” 

How could I ? I, who was feeling wise and 
matronly, as if I were the mother of the human 
race, and had the world on my shoulders, himself 
included ! 

Besides, what strange ideas he must have about 
dolls ! Was a new doll to be made acquaintance 
with, and taken to one’s heart in a moment ? 

However, I took up the doll, and began to 
behave to it with great politeness. 

And Mrs. Danescombe drew near us, and 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


29 


made sundry efforts to “ amuse” Piers by jerking 
the angular wooden puppet with which she had 
presented him, by means of internal strings, into 
various mountebank attitudes, which were in- 
tended to be funny. 

I remember now the sense of grave wonder 
and pity with which I contemplated these futile 
attempts at entertainment, whilst Piers continued 
to gaze steadily into her face with serious, unde- 
luded eyes, evidently concluding that she was 
quite too old to play, and that the whole thing was 
a piece of very ineffective dramatic performance. 
I think the courteous complaisance with which 
little children receive our imbecile attempts to 
amuse them very remarkable ; they who are never 
taken in, who are themselves actors of the first 
class, by instinct, living in a perpetually varied 
drama as gloriously independent of vulgar neces- 
sities of scene-painting as an Athenian audience ; 
they to whom any few square feet of earth where 
they can be let alone are an imperial amphithe- 
atre, and two chairs a hippodrome, and a heap of 
chips a fortune of theatrical properties. 

Piers, I am sure, took in the whole futility 
and absurdity of the situation ; but he also under- 
stood that the new lady meant well, and, like 
the little king he was, from time to time he 
vouchsafed her the patronage of a smile, and even 
condescended to imitate her movements with the 
puppet. 

Little king that he was ! My little king, whom 


30 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


I would serve with all that I was and had, and 
guard and cherish, and pet and honor, and keep 
the world warm for; and he his interpreter, his 
queen, his slave ! 

That night I asked nurse if I might say my 
prayers beside baby’s crib, instead of at her knee. 
The wonderful birds and flowers on her chintz 
petticoat had always been a hindrance to me, and 
also her snuff-box, and I so often had to begin 
all over again. 

At first she seemed rather hurt at the request ; 
but then I began to cry, and pleaded that baby 
looked so dear ; and she consented, and called us 
“ Poor innocents ! ” and began to cry, too. 

Piers was asleep, one little arm under his 
round cheek, flushed as it was with sleep, and 
the other little fat hand clenched like a wrestler’s, 
and thrust out over the edge of his cot. My 
prayers must have been a mysterious ritual to 
me, scarcely “in a tongue understanded of the 
people.’’ No one had ever explained them to me. 
I do not remember ever expecting anything to 
come of them, except some vague harm to some 
one if they were left out. What the words were 
at that time I cannot even tell. There were no 
Sunday-schools in our town ; nurse was very ig- 
norant, and I am sure she could not read. Not 
improbably they were the Lord’s Prayer and the 
invocation to the four Evangelists, long afterwards 
not disused in the district. And my theology 
was, doubtless, neither definite nor broad. It 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


31 


certainly, however, included a belief in something 
that could hurt Pier-s and me, especially if we 
were naughty, and in the dark. 

But mysterious, indeed, are all little children’s 
prayers ! 

Who knows the “ tongues of angels ? ” Who 
knows the mystic, unutterable communion there 
may be between the Father of spirits and those 
little ones whose angels always see His face ! 

“ Exiled children of Eve,” little royal strangers, 
whose wondering eyes have not yet narrowed 
their range to our mortal vision, — whose free fear- 
less, questioning thought is not yet fettered to our 
.mortal speech, — who knows the delicate, aerial 
touches that come and go along those strings the 
world’s rude hands have not yet swept? Who 
knows the moment when the Father who fell on 
the prodigal’s neck and kissed him, clasps to his 
heart those little ones who have not yet wilfully 
left the Father’s house? What kisses, what con- 
secrating touches are theirs ? 

Who knows, since God is love, — not primarily 
the Infinite Mind that speaks to us by works or 
thoughts, but the Father’s heart that speaks to us 
by loving, — what divine touches, real as a moth- 
er’s kisses, tender as the soft pressure of her arms, 
rest on the little ones ? 

Hot only on a few score of exceptional little 
Galilean children were the sacred Hands laid, in 
those three years which made visible the eternity 
of unseen Divine love. 


32 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Nor is it only a few Jewish fishermen who 
have understood the love of the Master for little 
children, — the babes, — the creatures we call speech- 
less and unconscious. 

Is it not rather we who have become blind, and 
speechless, and unconscious ? blinded by the count- 
less small glitterings, and the countless vain pry- 
ings of this world ; robbed of heavenly utterance 
by its empty chatterings and bitter contentions; 
made unconscious by its drowsy charms, of the 
realities of life and death, and love, of the capaci- 
ties for sorrow and joy, deeper even than sorrow 
around and within us still, whether we know it or 
not, — as they are around the little children we 
think unaware of them % 

Who knows how little the wisest of us know, 
or how much the simplest ? 

I know not, indeed, what passed in my heart 
that night, or what words passed my lips. But 1 
remember my cheek resting on my little brother’s 
cheek, and the dear little hand unclenching itself 
and resting on me, and the sleepy eyes opening 
for a moment on mine, and the parted lips sleepily 
lisping my name. 

And I remember lying down in my own little 
bed afterwards, so still and happy, and warm at 
heart, feeling not so much that I was brooded over, 
or needed it, as that some kind of wings had un- 
folded in me, and were brooding over Piers, and 
keeping him safe and warm. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


33 


That was, as far as I can remember, the way 
God began to teach me ; by filling my heart with 
that great love which was just a little feeble image 
of His. 

3 




CHAPTER III. 



N these days to be Insular is a reproach 
which most people repel with indigna- 
tion. Or if any one admits it with a 
contemptuous pity as but too applicable, 
in many respects, to our country, it is always with 
the tacit understanding that he himself is contem- 
plating that narrow and common-place little com- 
munity from some wide continent of experience 
and thought whence the island and its interest 
assume their duly diminutive proportions. 

In my early days people gloried in being In- 
sular. The “ right little, tight little island” was 
delighted in with something of the same kind of 
attachment an old sailor used to feel for his ship — 
knowing well her weak points, but knowing also 
what storms she had weathered, what broadsides 
she had gallantly stood, and fearless as to the tem- 
pests and battles to come ; a patriotism not at all 
tending to anything international or cosmopolitan, 
but combative, exclusive, Insular to the core. 

The Americans were still our “ colonies” across 
the seas ; we were fresh from a hot tight with 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


35 


them, in which onr national temper had not been 
sweetened by our having been in the wrong and 
having been beaten. On most of us the idea had 
scarcely dawned that they were a Nation at all. 
They were “ onr plantations,” a branch of the old 
trunk, vigorous certainly, but very knotty, and 
gnarled ; the vigor of course belonging to the stock 
they came of, and, (perhaps it must be admitted,) 
the knots and gnarls also. The echoes of a hun- 
dred years before, moreover, had scarcely died 
away, and in some Englishmen resentment against 
“ rebels” who had disowned the king, was blended 
with a dim disapproval of Dissenters who had 
tried to upset the Church, and were believed 
for the most part to be Puritans (whatever that 
meant), and therefore, naturally, to speak through 
their noses. 

Again, the French were “ a nation of dancing- 
masters,” who, with all theii misplaced agility, 
could not climb the shrouds of a ship. Had not 
their own Yoltaire lately called them a compound 
of monkey and tiger ? 

The “ German States ” — (Germany did not 
exist, even in popular ballads) — were too remote, 
and too unknown and varying a quantity to have 
any definite portrait. 

Spain loomed mistily- on us, gigantic and yet 
shadowy, with the old glooms and glories of her 
past playing fitfully around her, her palaces and 
prisons still echoing as we believed with groans, 
under an Inquisition not yet dead ; her fleets still 


36 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


recalling the Armada ; yet through all, a ghastli- 
ness and ghostliness, as if the whole structure were 
held together by old spells grown feeble, and at 
a bold touch or word might crumble helplessly 
away. 

Insular ! we thank God in our hymns for it ; isl- 
anded safe, in our green security, with our glori- 
ous constitution in Church and State, our king, 
our church, our ‘‘wooden walls a second 
“ chosen people,’’ better preserved than the first 
from the various idolatrous nations around. If 
Israel of old had been guarded by the Straits of 
Dover and the German Ocean, who could say that 
things might not have ended differently ? But 
no doubt it was to be. Israel was a stiff-necked 
people, and we, on the contrary, were always im- 
proving ourselves and our constitution. 

Of course even then there were a few croakers, 
who might have repeated Oliver Cromwell’s old 
exhortation, “ You glory in that ditch which 
guards your shores ; I tell you your ditch will be 
no defence to you unless you reform yourselves ; ” 
and a few profane wits infected with the levity of 
France, who did not regard even the Thirty-nine 
Articles, or our most religious and gracious king 
as unassailable ; and a few democrats who did not 
consider even our glorious constitution final. But 
for the most part, even if, when comparing class 
with class amongst us, we now and then recognized 
reluctantly that there was some unequal pressure, 
that there might be some corners which were not 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


37 


quite paradise ; when, on the other hand, we com- 
pared ourselves with the rest of the world, our 
self-appreciation was restored, and w T e became once 
more sensible of our privileges. 

Moreover, not only were we one island, we 
were in another sense an archipelago of islands. 

Not only was England thus islanded from the 
world. Every country town was islanded from 
the rest — was a living community in itself, with 
its own local history and government, local glories 
and wrongs, its local circle of families established 
there for generations ; not certainly without their 
mutual jealousies and rivalries, but belonging to 
each other by a real and recognized relationship. 

And still farther within this inner island was 
an innermost, like the ball within ball of the In- 
dian puzzle. 

In those days every Englishman’s “ house was 
his castle,’’ in a more peculiar sense, or at least in 
a greater variety of senses, than now. A house 
belonging to a family, was part of its complex 
existence, more in the same sense that a man’s 
body is part of his complex self. It grew with a 
family growth, flourished with the family prosper- 
ity, decayed with the family decay ; and as we die 
out of our bodies and leave them, so, with a mortal- 
ity in one sense more pathetic because apparently 
not inevitable, a family might, by misfortune, 
folly, failure of succession, die out of the old family 
house. A house, therefore, had quite a different 
significance ; it had family histories stamped into 


38 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


it, growing out of it; it had features, character- 
istics, a life of its own. 

There are stately mansions of our great fami- 
lies, to which something of this character attaches 
still. The greatness and glory of the great family 
is built into them, and they stand. 

But, then, this family character attached to 
countless unpretending JCnglish houses, and this 
not only in country places to tine old manorial 
halls, or homely farmsteads, but in the streets of 
every town. We all of us can recognize those old 
houses still. They look out on us with pathetic, 
or quaint and humorous human faces ; the human- 
ity that has grown with them and around them, 
and from them for generations, cannot die out of 
them. And when we see them left stranded for 
lorn in some featureless row of windows and doors 
such as human creatures now swarm and are fed 
in, until the next hive is ready, we welcome 
them or compassionate them, not as buildings but 
as friends. 

In such houses were the families of my child- 
hood islanded in the island of our little country 
town, in the island of our England. 

I smile sometimes a little when I see people 
endeavoring now aesthetically to restore this lost 
sacredness of houses by means of Elizabethan 
windows and fireplaces and mediaeval texts, and 
family arms on doors and walls. I think the rush 
of nineteenth-century life will be too strong for 
them. Will their children live where they lived, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


39 


or love what they loved, or think as they thought. 

If it is hard to make a lost religion or a lost 
architecture live again, I think it is harder still to 
revive a dead habit of social life. But our grand- 
children will see. 

It is this inmost island of home that I must- 
first- picture, before the scene widens to the town 
and the country in which it was enclosed. All 
true geography, all geography which would lead 
to the knowledge, not of names, but of things, 
must begin, not with the elliptic and the equator, 
but with the pond in the farm-yard. 

The living germ of our town was a Benedict- 
ine abbey, one of the finest and earliest in the 
kingdom. This abbey had been built by the side 
of a clear rocky river, where the hills through 
which it cut its way from the moorland opened out 
so as to leave a little level of rich meadow-land. 

Around the church and the conventual build- 
ings, the two solid stone bridges, and the weir 
with its deep pool and salmon-trap, whence the 
town Abbott’s Weir had its name, the houses of 
the town clustered, gradually stretching back over 
the strip of level to the hills. 

Our house had thus been driven to the foot of 
the steep slope, and had been constrained to make 
the best of it by all kinds of eccentric devices, 
climbing here and delving there, until it possessed 
scarcely two rooms on the same level ; to children 
perhaps the most delightful plan on which a house 
could be constructed. Its very existence was a 


40 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


continual victory over adverse circumstances, and 
tended to communicate to its inhabitants, accord- 
ing to the material on which the stamp was im- 
pressed, a character either militant and adventur- 
ous, or easy and imperturbable, conquering circum- 
stances by resolutely surmounting it, or by accept- 
ing its ups and downs as inevitable, and making 
them part of its own constitution. 

The entrance was by a Tudor arch into a broad 
passage. On the right was a large wainscotted 
room with a stone floor and one long, low mul- 
lioned window with a long, deep window-seat. 
In this room, as a rule, the family breakfasted, 
dined, and had all its family meals — all that were 
not connected with ceremonial and extended to 
strangers. This also was the nearest approach 
Piers and I had to a day nursery or play-room, 
our great resource on any wet days which drove 
us from our natural territory in the garden ; a 
room into which, even after the regime of my 
stepmother, Pluto was admitted, and my father’s 
favorite pointer and setter, and that long succes- 
sion of my kittens which came to such a variety 
of tragical ends. Mrs. Danescombe’s cat, which 
never came to misfortune of any kind, sleek, im- 
penetrable, demure, resided in the Oak parlor, 
approached by a small flight of steps on the oppo- 
site side of the passage. Into this we only went 
by invitation; but that cat had the entree. A 
most evil and hypocritical creature we considered 
her ; an embodiment of all the dark side of cat 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


41 


nature — malignantly breaking all tbe china and 
gluttonously imbibing all the dainties, on account 
of which my luckless kittens suffered, and then 
sitting upright on the parlor window-seat wink- 
ing superciliously at all the world. 

There were few middle tints in the portraits 
of our childhood, and among the most Rembrandt- 
like that comes back to me is the image of my 
stepmother’s cat. All that Puritan meant to the 
most prejudiced of Cavaliers, or Tartuffe to the 
most anti-ecclesiastical of Frenchmen, that sleek, 
stealthy, whiskered black-and-white cat meant to 
me. It scarcely ever purred. We believed it 
could not pur ; its conscience was too laden with 
crime, Nor do I remember its ever playing, ex- 
cept once or twice in a murderous way with a fly 
on the window-pane when it thought no one was 
looking. Its name was Mignonette, and to this 
day I can scarcely do justice to the sweetness of 
the little flower whose appellation it polluted. 

' The Oak parlor had a very different social rank 
from the Stone parlor. It was my stepmother’s 
especial domain. It was seldom entered by any 
one until the afternoon, being the scene of lei- 
surely employment and sober amusement, and of 
all social entertainments not of the stateliest kind. 
There Mrs. Danescombe embroidered muslin and 
made lace, or took snuff and played cards with 
chosen associates, always for small stakes ; and there 
were solemnly handed around trays with small 
glasses of liqueurs or cordials, or in aftertimes 


42 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


with dainty small cups of tea. No uproarious 
merriment was ever heard within those precincts ; 
nothing stronger than tea or cordials was ever 
sipped therein. Seldom did masculine foot in- 
vade them. If my father wished to entertain his 
friends with solid British viands and vigorous 
British beverages, recourse was had to the Stone 
parlor, where also we gathered in the winter even- 
ings, on oaken settles or footstools around the great 
old chimney, with its dogs and log-fires. Echoes 
of Christmas merriment and of children’s laughter 
hung around those old walls ; but the wainscot- 
ting of the Oak parlor could never have reported 
anything more sonorous than the murmured gos- 
sip of the card-table, unless some of the players, 
by any series of other people’s mistakes or their 
own mischances, lost their game and their tempers, 
and broke out of the decorum of the place into the 
hard realities of unfairly lost shillings and six- 
pences. 

There were two sacred things to me, however, 
in the room. 

In the recesses on each side of the high oaken 
chimney-piece with its carved looking-glass, hung 
portraits of my father and of my own mother in 
the dresses they wore just after they were mar- 
ried ; he with a bag-wig, hand ruffies, and a sword, 
and elaborate shoebuckles, which certainly did not 
recall his every-day appearance ; she with pow- 
dered hair brushed over a high cushion, a little hat 
stuck coquettishly on the top of it, a blue satin 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


43 


bodice and train, and brocaded petticoat, with a 
large bouquet in the hand laid on her lap, and a 
shepherd’s crook in the other. At her feet was 
a lamb wreathed with flowers, looking wistfully 
up in her face. The native Vandyke or Sir Josh- 
ua had evidently a confused Ideal compounded of 
the pastoral and the courtly, and was very familiar 
with neither. There must have been something 
very invincible in the character of my mother’s 
face to penetrate as it did at once through the false 
idealism and the imperfect execution of the painter. 
For it was evidently a likeness. Underneath a 
fair, finely-arched brow w T ere distinct though deli- 
cate eyebrows, visible far back at the side of the 
forehead, and overshadowing very large, soft, dark- 
grey eyes. There was much . depth in the eyes, 
but no dreaminess. They evidently saw — saw 
the lamb looking up into them, and much besides. 
The mouth was firm and grave, the pose of the 
whole figure was at once easy and commanding ; 
the small hand, wooden as the painting was, held 
the crook with a real grasp. You felt instinctively 
that the visible lamb and the imaginary flock were 
well cared for under such guardianship. Oh! 
with what longing I used to look at that lamb 
lying so safe at her feet. 

She sat before me, a type not so much of fond, 
passionate motherliness, as of tender, wise, protect- 
ive motherhood ; not so much of the mother’s 
bliss, as of the mother’s care ; not like one of Mu- 
rillo’s girl Madonnas dreaming over a new delight, 


44 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


but like one of the earlier Italian school, grave 
with the very weight of the mother’s joy, and with 
the destinies of the life with which her own was 
bound up. 

For had I not the memory of her touch and 
her kiss to interpret the portrait? Had not those 
hands pressed me to her heart, and did I not know 
how those grave lips could part and smile ? 

Underneath this portrait stood a little table 
with a well in it, containing, 1 knew, my mother’s 
work, and especially one dainty little frill of a 
baby’s cap, unfinished, with her needle in it. 
Upon it was placed her ebony spinning-wheel. 
Nurse used to dust it reverently every morning ; 
and often I stole in with her, and then, when 
nurse was not looking, I used to reach up to the 
picture and softly kiss its hands. 

Every afternoon, when there was no company, 
I spent an hour in that room with Mrs. Danes- 
combe and the hypocritical cat, learning to sew. 
But at those times I did not dare to look much at 
my beloved picture ; because, being frequently in 
trouble with my work, I was afraid, if I caught 
sight of that lamb and of that dear face, a terrible 
rush of the feeling of motherlessness would come 
over me, and I should cry. For, once, when I had 
been very unsuccessful with my sewing, and had 
had to unpick it several times, this had happened, 
and Mrs. Danescombe had asked what I was crying 
for ; and I, stretching out my arms to the picture, 
and sobbing out something about my “ mother,” 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


45 


my stepmother had replied in an even, undis- 
turbed voice — one of her maxims being that “ a 
gentlewoman never degrades reproof into scolding 
by raising her voice ” — 

“ Bridget, that is something I cannot permit. 
When little girls lose their tempers over their 
tasks, I cannot suffer them to deceive themselves 
by calling their naughty passions sensibility. 
You have many faults; but I did hope you were a 
truthful child. Never let me hear you speak in 
that way again.” 

And that was a reproach I never did incur 
again. How it burnt into my heart! Not only 
by the injustice, but the justice in it. For I was 
a very truthful child ; and it was not only the 
dull pain of being misunderstood that hurt me ; 
it was the terrible fear that my stepmother, after 
all, had understood me better than I understood 
myself. Was she not older, wiser, my father’s 
chosen ruler for us — set over us by all the mys- 
terious powers whence authority springs — author- 
ity against which I had not a thought of rebelling i 
And had I not been in something very like a 
naughty temper, writing down very hard things 
against my stepmother, and the bitter fate of little 
girls in general who had to learn sewing ; indeed, 
even against the nature of things which involved 
clothes that had to be sewn ? And was it possible 
that I had desecrated that love to my mother, and 
the memory of her love, by making it an excuse 
even to myself for being cross and angry ? 


46 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


I certainly had sometimes, underneath these 
perplexities and self-accusations, a dim sense, now 
and then flashing into a passionate persuasion that 
it was not all my fault. But then, again, I re- 
proached myself again for this. 

If the things in Mrs. Danescombe’s character 
which jarred against mine had been angles, the 
conflict would have been less harassing. But in 
her there were no angles; there was nothing to 
lay hold of ; it was simply coldness, smoothness 
of surface, hard polish, and impenetrability ; and 
what “ case 55 could be made out of these ? She 
never scolded, or threatened, or punished. She 
simply reproved. Her severest discipline was a 
distant politeness and a peculiar way of calling me 
a Bridget.” What was there cruel in that ? Yet 
it froze into my bones. And there were times 
when her mere presence was to me a prison worse 
than the darkest of the dark holes nurse threat- 
ened us with. It was not until long afterwards 
I learned why. 

Her government was based on suspicion. She 
was not theological in any sense ; she had no ex- 
treme theories of the depravity of human nature. 
But she had a deep-seated conviction that every 
man and woman, and more especially every ser- 
vant and little child, was more likely to do wrong 
than right, and more likely to do wrong from the 
worst motives than the best. 

Combined with this, or perhaps flowing from 
it, was a remarkable keenness of perception as to 


A GAINST TIIE STREAM. 


47 


any defect or mistake, in anything or person, from a 
speck of dust or rust on the furniture, to the small- 
est solecism in dress or manners, or the least ex- 
cess or defect in demeanor. 

Therefore she never praised ; partly because 
she thought commendation nourished vanity, and 
partly because in the best work she always de- 
tected some petty blemish, not imaginary, but 
real ; yet, however small, sufficient to distract her 
attention from all that was good on it. 

It would have been a difficult atmosphere to 
grow in, but that we had a large space of life free 
from her inspection, and an element of positive 
freedom, warmth, and breadth in my father, 
which, I suppose, would scarcely have done alone. 

Only I have often thought that my mother’s char- 
acter would have been the supplementary opposite, 
as my stepmother’s was the neutralizing contrary 
of my father. My mother’s character would have 
drawn out and filled up all that was highest and 
best in his. Mrs. Danescombe merely repressed 
and neutralized. With her he was, perhaps, re- 
strained from doing or saying some things better 
not done or said ; with my mother he would have 
become all he might have been. Both made some 
kind of harmony, but with my mother all the life 
would have been larger, richer, fuller. 




CHAPTER IV. 


T the end of the passage was a wide stair- 
case with black oak bannisters, which led 
to the Best parlor, an apartment pro- 
vided with furniture altogether 

“ too bright and good 
For common nature’s daily food ; ” 

where from week to week the amber damask cur- 
tains and tapestried chairs were pinned into thick 
coverings, and the carpet was rolled up on one 
side, and the gilded sconces on the frame of the 
small round looking-glass were veiled, and the 
Yenetian-blinds were closely shut. 

This was the inmost sanctuary of Mrs. Danes- 
combe’s domain. In my mother’s time it had not 
been furnished, and I had faint memories of its 
having been abandoned to us as a play- room ; of 
wild games there with my father in winter twi- 
light, and of delicious terrors, half-real, half-feigned, 
as he sprang on us from dim corners with awful 
growls and roars, in the characters of lion or bear. 
Moreover, outside there was a balcony which was 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


49 


a delightfully romantic place, whence the world 
assumed quite a new aspect, a border-land which 
was neither indoors nor out-of-door§, where all the 
life of the street moved before us in a continual 
procession, better than any picture-book. 

But now all this was changed, and we only en- 
tered the room at all on the. very highest days, 
in our very best, and therefore most harassing, 
clothes ; and would as soon have thought of ven- 
turing into the pulpit of the church as into the 
balcony. 

Behind this were the principal bedrooms, look- 
ing on an inner court, and then a flight of rather 
ladder-like stairs leading to the first platform of 
the garden, on which opened the Summer parlor. 
This was my father’s especial retreat, the corner 
of the house which he succeeded in defending 
against all the assaults of Order, and keeping 
freely open to us. 

In this room we had the rights of citizenship 
to the fullest extent ; everything was open to us ; 
and, in consequence, everything was sacred to us. 
We were trusted and believed in ; and to have 
hurt anything my father cared about would have 
been to Piers or me, naturally, the direst of mis- 
fortunes. 

My father’s principles of government and views 
of life were the very contrary of Mrs. Danescombe’g. 
His expectation was that every one belonging to 
llim would do right, and everything would go 
right ; and if, contrary to expectation, any one 
4 


50 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


did wrong, or anything went wrong, he was 
wont to attribute it to the best possible motives, 
and resume his sanguine anticipations, unbroken. 
Not, perhaps, an altogether adequate principle for 
government on any large scale. Although I re- 
member being smitten with a far keener repent- 
ance by being misunderstood by him on the too 
favorable side than all my step-mother’s keen de- 
tection and exposure of the dark ever brought to 
me. 

The real defect in his rule was not, I think, 
hoping or trusting too much, but suffering his 
sanguine temperament to dim his sight. To see 
everything wrong, and yet hope everything good, 
is higher, I suppose, because truer. 

And it was there, I fancy, my mother would 
have helped him. The optimism which revolted 
to an extreme against Mrs. Danescombe’s suspi- 
cions would have been braced and corrected by my 
mother’s loving truthfulness. 

That room was a world of interest to # us. There 
were marvellous models of machines in it (those 
were the days of Watt and Art w right), balls of 
twine, fishing tackle, carpenter’s • tools, a turning 
lathe, pieces of various woods — Spanish mahogany 
and cedar, curious knots and blocks of oak, walnut, 
and various native woods ; for my father delighted 
in experimenting, and had a theory that half the 
use that might be was not made of our own Eng- 
lish produce. The marred work, and the pieces 
with unconquerable flaws were our Jetsum and 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


51 


Flotzum ; but the greatest pleasure of all was to 
be allowed to stand by and watch while he was at 
work. 

To watch the real work of grown people was 
and endless interest to us children. It was their 
amusements, and still more their attempts to 
amuse us, which seemed to us so dull. And by 
mistaken benevolence of that kind we in our 
childhood were not much oppressed. 

My father having much “ of the child’s heart 
in his breast,” took us quite naturally into his con- 
fidence, £nd enjoyed our sympathy in his projects 
as much as we did his in ours. Mrs. Danescombe, 
probably never having known childhood herself, 
capable of having existed from infancy like the 
children in old-fashioned family pictures, erect 
from morning till night in a cushion and hoop, 
never thought of us as helpless creatures that had 
to be made happy, but as fallen and refractory 
creatures that had to be kept down, and brought 
up, and if possible kept tidy. Thus no one took 
any trouble to amuse us. And accordingly we 
were endlessly amused. 

Never, moreover, were children happier in the 
scenery of their childhood, than we in that dear 
old up-and-down house and garden. 

The garden consisted of a succession of plat- 
forms and terraces, connected by flights of steps, 
or by steep slopes. The first of these was opposite 
the Summer parlor. Hound it was a border of 
flowers — roses, pansies, marigolds, love-lies-bleed- 


52 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ing, hen and chicken daisies, sunflowers, holly- 
hocks, all Lord Bacon’s catalogue. In one corner, 
hollowed out of the rocky hillside, was a dropping 
well, where the slow falling of the drops, one by 
one, we saw not whence, into the dark cool water 
below, mysteriously echoing from the sides, made 
delicious music for ns. The entrance was draped 
by tufts and fringes of ferns of the richest green 
and the most delicate forms ; beneath it, under the 
rock, was a bed of the sweetest lilies of the valley. 
It was only entered in the early morning by a few 
stray sunbeams, and of these scarcely one reached 
the opposite rock, and none ever penetrated into 
the clefts and corners. My father told us it was 
natural, and carved out by the little drops them- 
selves dropping through hundreds, perhaps thou- 
sands of years. They had begun their chimes, he 
said, long before any had sounded from the old 
church-tower. 

Thus to us that little melodious well was like 
the threshold of a thousand delightful mysteries. 
Where did those melodious drops start from ? 
From what dark hidden pools under the hills ? 
From what bright floating clouds in the sky ? 
Whose pitchers had they filled, — what little chil- 
dren had they sung to before? What were 
they saying to us, or wanting to say ? Wistful 
Undines and Uixen longing to speak to us : wise 
busy gnomes at work for ages, knowing thousands 
of secrets they would not tell but we would give 
anything to hear ; all ’ the wild mythology of 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


53 


mountain and water sprites; all that “nurse” 
nature would say to us and cannot ; all that we 
would learn from her but cannot ; dim reflections 
of our personality on material things ; dim shinings 
through and prismatic refractions of the personal- 
ity beyond and within ; all this, an 4 unutterably 
more, murmured to us through that dropping 
well. Children of the mystic and humorous 
North, did we need legends Scandinavian or Teu- 
tonic to tell us what a strange compound the 
world was ? 

Was there not, moreover, from time to time, 
in that very well, an apparition of a gigantic wide- 
mouthed frog, wdio in the midst of all that melan- 
choly and mystic music, and those delicate ferns, 
and those sweet lilies of the valley, would croak 
and hop, and be as self-satisfied, and as entirely 
an embodied joke, as any of the quaintest dwarfs 
Grimm ever disinterred or Cruikshank ever drew % 
The whole mysterious animal-world lay open to 
us between our sympathetic dog Pluto and that 
supercilious impenetrable frog. 

When, years afterwards, w6 saw those German 
stories, we felt we had known them all our lives. 

For I confess I am tempted to count it among 
the blessings of our childhood that we had no 
children’s books at all- 

No doubt there were children’s books in our 
days ; but the allowance was scanty, and what 
there was did not reach us. If we had been pro- 
vided with any, they would, no doubt, have been 


54 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


heavily weighted with morals, and would have 
been duller to us th&n our lessons. But happily 
we were not. Our lesson-books were good, hon- 
est lesson-books — my first was a horn-book. Our 
alphabets had no pictures ; there was no sugar on 
the margin of our draughts of learning. We took 
them, certainly not without tears. But if to us 
“ books ” meant the antithesis of “ play,” and we 
cried over them and their consequences very heart- 
ily and very frequently, at least we did not fall 
into the far more desperate fate of yawning over 
our play, and listless by requesting to be instruct- 
ed how to amuse ourselves. 

In our days the age of wise children’s literature 
had not commenced. For us Bosamond and 
Frank, Harry and Lucy did not exist. They may, 
indeed, have dawned on some of the higher social 
summits, but certainly did not penetrate to Ab- 
bot’s Weir. Still less, of course, was there any- 
thing for us of the nature of the reactionary 
literature of nonsense, clever or inane, which suc- 
ceeded that era of supernatural good sense. 

What nursery nonsense we had was quite genu- 
ine, with no perplexing parodies of sense, or half 
glimmerings of sense treacherously lurking beneath 
the surface. For us Little Jack Horner sat in 
his corner, and took out his plum, and congratu 
lated himself (not as one might have expected, on 
his good fortune, but on his virtue,) in the most 
literal way, without any allegorical construction. 
No suspicions of satire, or of the signs of the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


55 


zodiac, marred our enjoyment of the- confusion 
which ensued when “ the cat had the fiddle, the 
cow jumped over the moon, the little dog laughed 
to see the sport, and the dish ran away with the 
spoon.” 

For us Mother Hubbard’s agreeable disap- 
pointment at the futility of her dog’s coffin was 
always fresh ; the funeral rites of Jenny Wren 
could be repeated to any extent ; the Babes in the 
Wood and Little Bed Biding Hood were alter- 
nately dreaded and desired as we felt equal or not 
to the luxuries of tragedy. But between those 
ancient histories and the literature of our elders 
there was no intervening world of little boys and 
girls, exemplarily good, supernaturally naughty, 
sentimental, religious, or scientific. 

The world of grown people’s work — of animals 
and flowers, the garden, and the timber-yard, and 
the iron foundry were our books. And for us 
there was no idle reading. 

But perhaps we were exceptionally happy in 
these respects. My father himself was our Miss 
Edgeworth, almost always ready to explain to us 
his own work, or to enter with such serious inter- 
est as we felt its due into ours. 

And, of course, it is not every child who can 
be free of a timber-yard and a foundry as we 
were. 

For I have not yet told half the delights of our 
garden. 

By the side of the dropping well was a door, 


56 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


better to us than any underground steps of Alad- 
din, leading through a short tunnel, ending in a 
flight of stairs cut in the rock, to the second gar- 
den, which was a steep slope crowned at the top 
with a terrace and arbor. 

This was of peculiar interest to us, because it 
was one of the pages of our own original illustra- 
ted copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress, being obvi- 
ously the Hill Difficulty, the arbor where Christian 
lost his roll, and also in another aspect the Palace 
Beautiful, and the Delectable Mountains whence 
the pilgrims could survey the land. 

Could not we survey the whole land from that 
summit ? 

Below us lay the slate roofs of the town, tier 
below tier, the two bridges and the river ; and op- 
posite was the fine old grey tower of the church, 
with its pinnacles standing out against the 
wooded hillsides, whilst above stretched the sweep- 
ing curves and sharp angles of the granite Tors, 
the moorland hills, whence the river flowed, 
purple and golden, with crisp lights and shadows, 
or blue and soft and far away, “ the everlasting 
hills.” 

This, therefore, was one of our usual haunts on 
Sunday afternoons. 

In the side wall of this garden was another 
door, and beyond it an orchard, and beyond that 
a great free range of fields called the Leas, and at 
the top of this a channel of water called the Beat, 
which was detached higher up from the river, and 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


57 


fell at one end of the Leas in a cascade which 
turned the large water-wheel of the iron foundry. 
At the other end of this field was the timber- 
yard, and the foundry and the timber-yard were 
among the chief scenes of my father’s work and of 
our play. 

In those days it was the general custom for men 
of business to live near their work. How, scarcely 
even the smaller shopkeepers live over their shops ; 
and not only great cities but country towns are 
fringed with their suburbs of villas. Then, even 
large merchants lived near their warehouses, and 
if, as we did, they possessed a farm, it was a gen- 
uine farm, in the real country, where men and 
women did their real work ; and if things were fair 
to see, it was because it was their nature, not be- 
cause they were put there to be seen. I suppose 
there is gain in the change. People breathe better 
air, at least physically ; of the moral atmosphere I 
am not so sure. It may be good to escape from 
the cares of business to vineries and conserva- 
tories and geranium beds ; it is certainly better 
than to be buried, body and soul, in business ; but 
to ennoble business is even better than to escape 
from it. All work must be degraded and must de- 
grade, the chief object of which is to earn the 
means to do no work. The highest art may cer- 
tainly in that way be degraded into a trade ; and 
I think there are few manufactures or trades which 
may not, on the other hand, be raised into art. 

At least it was 90 with my father. That tim- 


58 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ber-yard and that foundry were to him, and through 
him to us, outlets into the world of knowledge and 
of work. 

Into the interior of the foundry we were not 
permitted to enter except under his protection. 

My chief associations with that were a sense 
of the wonder-working powers of water and of 
fire. 

It was, indeed, a perpetual fairy tale to see 
those creatures which we knew as fantastic dwarfs, 
or melodious melancholy nymphs, or dancing 
sprites, when they worked at their own wild will 
in the dropping well, or around the great logs on 
the hearth of the Stone parlor, transformed into 
steadfast and irresistible giants by the pressure of 
the steady will of man. 

For thousands of years the slow-dropping water 
had been at work, and had carved out to the sound 
of its own singing that strange hollow in the rocky 
hills, with its grotesque angles and dim clefts ; and 
now at last the great water-wheel was set to direct 
it ; and patiently and willingly the mighty crea- 
ture, rising to its full strength, turned the great 
machine round and round, making, by its own un- 
conquerable beauty, the loveliest sparkling cascades 
and showers at every turn. And out of this com- 
bined power of water and man came harrows, and 
spades, and scythes ; and pots, and pans, and ket- 
tles, and all kinds of fairy household gifts to make 
our work easier and our homes pleasanter. Were 
not the swift, flashing waters, careering with their 


AG AM ST THE STREAM. 


59 


rush of rapid music over the wheel, as pleasant to 
see and hear as when dropping into the well? 
And were not scythes, and even kettles, as poeti- 
cal things to make as caves ? — the fireside and the 
reaping field being surely as sacred as the rocky 
hillside and the heathery moors ? 

I have always, however, been rather glad, as 
far as the lessons and associations of childhood 
went, that our machinery was worked by the sepa- 
rate powers of fire and water, and not by these 
powers combined in the more prosaic form of 
Bteam. 

There was a large foundry not fifty miles from 
us, worked by steam, before we were born. And 
at the great engine factory of Bolton and Watt, 
many years before, my father used to tell how Mr. 
Bolton showed Dr. Johnson round, and said to 
him, “ Sir, we sell here the thing all men are in 
search of — Power.” 

We lived in the days of the birth and infancy 
of many things which have since grown to gigan- 
tic powers and overspread the world. 

Our childhood was passed in one of the great 
dawns of history. The world was awake and 
stirring around us in every direction — machinery, 
politics, religion — and my father was a man awake 
to every throb of the busy life around him. 

The great steam-power was already in the 
world, and through the busy brains of Watt, Cart- 
wright, and Arkwright, was feeling after its work 
in railroads, steamboats and power-looms. 'But, 


60 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


happily for us, our moorland river did the work 
for us ; and instead of pistons and cranks, and close 
oily rooms, we had our gigantic water-wheel and 
the cascade which rushed over it from the hill. 

Then, the pictures and parables enacted for us 
on the great casting-days, when we were taken to 
see the molten metal flow out of the furnace into 
the moulds of sand ; the Rembrandt- like groups of 
men, with blackened, illumined faces, shovelling 
out the liquid fire as if they had been agents in 
some fiery horrors of Dante’s Inferno ; the power 
of heat in that red cave of fire, raging at its roof 
into fierce white flames, which always made me 
think of Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, and clasp 
tight my father’s hand and Piers’, lest they should 
be burned up like the wicked accusers. 

I used to wonder how the three children and 
that “ Fourth ” looked in the midst of the flames ; 
not black, I was sure, like old Reuben Pengelly, 
the furnace-man ; but beautiful and calm, and 
fresh and white, like a very bright, soft moon in 
the midst of the angry glare. 

Yet old Reuben himself was very dear to us 
children. He had lost a little boy about the age 
of Piers, and he had always a very tender feeling 
to Piers, partly because the child, looking, no 
doubt, from his blackened face and muscular bare 
neck to his kind eyes, had always had such trust 
in him, and would have gone in his arms to the 
mouth of the furnace. Reuben’s delight on Sun- 
day, when he had his clean washed face and his 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


61 


best coat on, was to carry Piers in his arms about 
the silent foundry-yard, among the stationary 
wheels and hammers, and to sing us Methodist 
hymns ; for he was a man of a strong, fervent 
piety, such as fitted his rough work and his mus- 
cular frame ; and it was from him I first remem- 
ber hearing the story of the three children in the 
furnace. To Reuben the Bible was the written 
part of a continuous living history, unwritten ; and 
he told us how that Fourth, “ who made the flames 
as soft as morning dews to them, was with him, 
old Reuben Pengelly, as really as with them, and 
with us little ones too.” And I used often to gaze 
into the depths of that burning haze in a vague 
hope of finding something marvellous there. 

All the men knew us, not as angelic benefact- 
ors descending on them now and then on festival 
occasions, but as little creatures they had some 
kind of tender right in ; master’s,” and also, 
therefore, “ theirs.” And we knew the inside of 
many of their homes, not merely by religious or 
benevolent visits, but naturally, as our neighbors 
— as people who had known, and loved, and served 
us and ours before we -had known them. 

There is incalculably much in that tie of neigh- 
borhood between rich and poor, employer and em- 
ployed. The mere daily natural crossing of our 
paths is something; the familiarity with each 
other’s faces and dwellings, and the countless kind- 
nesses that may spring out of it, are infinitely 
more. Our Lord knew us well when He said, 


62 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


not “ Ye shall love mankind as yourselves,” but 
“ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” We 
often read it the other way. But the meaning is 
quite different. 

And it often seems to me that half the social 
problems which beset us arise from the rich and 
poor having ceased in so many instances to be 
neighbors. What is half at least of our charitable 
machinery, but an ineffective and clumsy effort to 
replace the countless little interchanges of mutual 
good-will and service, the countless healthful, mu- 
tually sustaining intertwinings of life and love, 
which are involved in the simple fact of living 
within sight of each other. 

The timber-yard, however, was Piers’ and my 
most constant resource and delight ; our gymna- 
sium, our race-course, the dockyard of our navies. 

Thence also the histories my father told us 
made a broad channel on which our imaginations 
sailed away to the various northern and southern 
lands, where the great bare timbers over which 
we sprang had grown. 

When we were tired we used to sit on these 
trunks, and Piers would listen to any extent whilst 
I reproduced to him narratives of bears and wolves 
which had crept stealthily like cats over the snows 
after their prey, or howled and growled among 
the stems of these Norway pines. 

We must have been rather sensational and 
gloomy in our tastes, for these bear and wolf- 
stories were always more popular with ns than 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


63 


those of the garlanded trees, and the gay parrots, 
or even of the monkeys of the South. Through 
the timber-yard, the atlas became a living «world 
to us ; and I have no doubt the sense of all these 
far-off things and creatures mingled like music 
with our plays, as we jumped from trunk to trunk, 
as free and happy as the squirrels and birds which 
had hopped from branch to branch in former 
days. 

Here also were the chips out of which we con- 
structed the fleets which sailed in the Leat at the 
top of the Leas, the fleets for which we made har- 
bors and piers, and carried on our great contest 
with the elements that were always ruthlessly 
endeavoring to draw them over the cascade, to 
be crushed by the inexorable water-wheel. 




CHAPTER Y. 

HE Sundays of our childhood, how much 
depends on them ! To me the associa- 
tions they bring are chiefly of sunshine 
and rest ; undisturbed, unless by an un- 
easy sense of responsibility in relation to Sunday 
clothes. . 

I cannot recall much definite religious teach- 
ing. We used, certainly, to say the Church cate- 
chism to Mrs. Danescombe ; and I must confess it 
seemed to me a very obscure collocation of words, 
in which it was nearly impossible not to put the 
wrong sentence first. I do not remember any 
part of it being explained to us, except the duty 
to our neighbor, which was enforced on us with 
strong personal application, and left me so op- 
pressed -with the impossibility of either saying or 
doing it, and so perplexed about the quantity of 
wrong things one might have done without know- 
ing, that I should have been quite ready, with a 
certain little French girl at her first confession, to 
have pronounced myself guilty of all the sins pro- 
hibited in the Decalogue, including Simony. 



AGAINST THE STREAM . 


65 


My father never gave us direct lessons of any 
kind, religious or secular. He was undoubtedly 
not didactic, and I suppose he was not dogmatic ; 
probably not finding any great necessity of form- 
ulas for his own use, and certainly not disposed to 
impose them on others. Neither was he given to 
cavil or to question. His mind was as little of the 
stuff heretics, as that of inquisitors, are made of; a 
subtle material, perhaps sometimes more similar 
than either think. In Scotland I think it probable 
he would have accepted the Westminster Confes- 
sion, in Saxony the Confession of Augsburg, in 
France the great Creeds of the Gallican Church, 
his faith in all cases remaining substantially the 
same, and in all cases omitting the anathemas. 

He was not theological at all in the sense of 
being keenly alive to the defects in other people’s 
theology. He was theological to the core in the 
sense that St. John was the Theologian ; in that 
his faith began with God rather than with man ; 
less with man, erring, failing, sinning, than with 
God, loving, giving, forgiving. 

Analysis and criticism were not his element. 
So far from his theology being negative, if any- 
thing was wanting in it, it was negations. If in 
after life we wandered into doubts and perplexi- 
ties, to come back to him was to come back neither 
to elaborate solutions nor to anxious denunciations, 
but to the child’s heart and the Apostles’ Creed. 
His influence on us was through what he was, and 
what he loved. 


5 


06 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


Cowper, then a new poet, was his delight ; not 
for his satire on social frailties, or his bitter lamen- 
tations over human depravity ; hut for his sympathy 
with human wrong, his gentle pathos, his sunny 
humor, his large and loving hope in man and God. 

Not that my father was destitute of the force 
of indignation ; but, like Cowper 5 s, his indigna- 
tion was reserved for injustice rather than for 
error ; for the Bastile, for the slave trade, for the 
desecration of the sacrament into a political test, 
for the corruption and meannesses of “ corpora- 
tions , 55 for “ charging God with such outrageous 
wrong 55 as leaving the sages of old 
“ in endless woe 

^or ignorance of wliat they could not know.” 

It is strange to see how many abuses then hotly 
contended for, are now abandoned by the extre- 
mest reactionists ; and on the other hand, how 
much of the larger hopes which still have to be 
contended for, had even then dawned on gener- 
ous Christian hearts. 

To my father we owe the blessing of libera- 
tion, space, and joyousness connected with Sunday, 
and to him also the inestimable benefit, that to us 
Christianity was associated, not with limitation, 
prohibition, retrogression, but with freedom, ex- 
pansion, and progress, with all that is generous 
and glad and hopeful, and belonging to the light. 

At eight o’clock the “ warning 55 church-bell 
announced that it was Sunday ; and father used 
to knock at our nursery door, and carry us off to 


AGAINST THE STB E AM. 


67 


the weekly festival of breakfast in the Stone-par- 
lor, Piers usually perched on his shoulders, and 
I holding his hand. 

Then followed that long trial of patience, — the 
apparelling for church ; and then the walk by 
father’s side down the quiet yet festive street, 
between the closed shop windows, among the 
friendly greetings of the neighbors, across the 
churchyard, past that one corner of it which was 
the most sacred place on earth to him and to us, 
up the long aisle to our high, square pew, between 
the squire’s and the vicar’s. 

When we sat down, my view was necessarily 
quite domestic, limited by the wooden walls. But 
when the singing began, it was my privilege to 
stand on the seat and survey the congregation ; 
and most marvellous and interesting to me were 
the Sunday transformations of everybody by 
means of clothes. 

There was far more difference between the best 
and every-day clothes in those days than now, and 
far more variety in costume, not only between 
different classes — between what might be termed 
generally rich and poor — but between the differ- 
ent orders and species of well-to-do people. Be- 
tween the rich and poor the contrast was not only 
in form but in material. Silk was utterly un- 
known below a certain level ; calico prints with 
imitations of French or Damascene patterns had 
not been made common by Manchester looms. 
Stout woolseys, woven in cottage looms, clean 


68 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


white kerchiefs, and sober blues and hodden greys 
characterized the free-seats. 

Yet none of the transformations of Sunday 
seemed to me so complete and remarkable as that 
which set Reuben Pengelly in the choir gallery, 
embracing a huge musical instrument — not the 
“ wee sinfu’ fiddle,’’ but a gigantic bass-viol ; in 
a bright blue coat and scarlet waistcoat, which sat 
on his muscular unaccustomed limbs like' plate 
armor, and a conspicuously white shirt, his face 
shining at once with friction and devotion. There 
was a sober radiance, and yet a sense of respon- 
sibility about his countenance which continually 
attracted me to it, and I always found myself 
ending my survey of my neighbors with that dear 
reverent old face, as if unconsciously I recognized 
it to be a shrine and altar from which more than 
could be heard or seen was going up to heaven. 

And it must be confessed there was much to 
distract my attention. If the wages-paying and 
wages-receiving classes were thus sharply defined 
by the material of their clothes, the minor dis- 
tinctions among their richer neighbors were 
equally marked to a discriminating eye by their 
chronology. It was but at a slow pace that our 
town toilettes could approach the standard of the 
squire’s, and still further of the countess’ pew, in 
those brief intervals when the countess shone on 
us. 

Many decades of the fashion-book were thus 
represented around me, and it was impossible 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


69 


that my eye should not he arrested by varieties 
reaching from the aristocratic French classics of 
tight skirts and short waists, to the hoop and high- 
whalebone hood of Miss Felicity Benbow, the 
schoolmistress, to whom a Sunday dress was a 
possession for life, and who would as soon have 
thought of changing her grandfather the general’s 
Tory principles for Jacobinism, as her mother’s 
fashions for raiment, which she severely, but 
blushing^y, characterized as “little better than 
none at all.’’ 

I was not conscious of doing anything profane 
or unsabbatical in thus contemplating my neigh- 
bors. 

At that time no gorgeous varieties of sym- 
bolical vesture had been thought of for the clergy ; 
but I had no doubt that these varieties of costume 
among the laity formed as integral a part of the 
Sunday festivities as Tate and Brady, Keuben 
Pengelly’s great bass-viol, and my uncle Parson 
Fyford’s preaching a sermon in the pulpit robed 
in black. 

I cannot remember anything special m those 
sermons; but I do remember well waking up 
from time to time, not, as far as I know, by exter- 
nal suggestions, to a sense of meaning and a 
sense of appropriation, in various parts of the 
Liturgy. 

First there was the Lord’s prayer. Whatever 
else in the service might be the peculiar posses- 
sion of growm-up people, that plainly belonged to 


70 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


us children. We said it every morning and even- 
ing. Then there was the Apostles’ creed, which 
seemed to belong to the Lord’s prayer, beginning 
with the Almighty Father and going on with its 
simple history of the Saviour who came from 
heaven, who also like us had once a mother, and 
was nailed on the dreadful cross, and had died, 
and had been “ buried ” like our mother ; but un- 
like her, had risen again. He had, I knew r , made 
other people rise again, but not mother yet. But 
one day He would make us all rise again ; for 
that, father had told me, was what the end of the 
Creed meant. And then I should see mother. 

But there were two versicles in the Prayer- 
book, which being entirely incomprehensible to 
me, I always privately revised. 

Whatever the rest of the congregation might 
be able to say, being grown up, and no doubt hav- 
ing better consciences than I had, I, ignorant of 
archaic English, and keenly conscious of my own 
misdoings, could certainly never pray that God 
would “ not deal with me after my sins,” and 
“ would not reward me after my iniquities.” I 
who had become entangled in such a bewildering 
labyrinth of sins and iniquities, could I ask God 
not to deal any more after them with me ? There- 
fore I always left out the “not.” “Hot dealing 
with me,” as I understood it, so exactly repre- 
sented my stepmother’s mode of punishment. 
My food was given me, lessons were taught me, 
all the mechanism of life went on, even to the 


AGAINST TEE STREAM, 


71 


morning and evening kiss ; but I, as a little trem- 
bling, clinging, living, loving personality, was left 
out, ignored, the averted eye never meeting mine ; 
my words indeed answered ; my wants supplied, 
but I myself unresponded to altogether ; close in 
body, in heart and soul banished into outer dark- 
ness. I myself was simply “ not dealt with.” 

If God were at all like that, watching coldly 
and gravely in the expectation I should go wrong ; 
what a destiny, if for ever and ever I were to live 
in his sight and within his hearing, under the icy 
weight of his cold displeasure, not clear why I had 
offended Him, and feeling it quite hopeless to ask 
without the resource even of an occasional flash 
of indignant revolt, because of course He must 
be right ! 

Those versicles are, however, especially mem- 
orable to me as connected with one especial Sun- 
day afternoon. 

I had gone through a week of those small 
misdemeanors and misfortunes, connected, as usual, 
chiefly with behavior and clo'thes, in which mis- 
chance and misdoing were so inextricably con- 
fused to me, yet in which I so often felt that if 
the original offence which had drawn down the 
displeasure of my stepmother had' been trifling, 
the burning anger and revolt aroused in me w T ere 
not trifles. Moreover I had fallen into two un- 
deniable passions about wrongs done, as I con- 
ceived, to Piers, and to the reigning kitten. 

That Sunday therefore, with unusual fervor, 


72 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


and with bitter secret tears, I had prayed my 
little private revision of the Liturgy. 

“Deal with me! oh, do not give np dealing 
with me 'after my sins.” 

Poor blundering childish prayer, I believe it 
was heard. 

I had certainly no irreverent intention of cor- 
recting the compilers of the Prayer-book. I only 
thought I must be so much worse than other peo- 
ple who could calmly say the words as they were 
printed ! Otherwise, of course, the words would 
never have been there. My stepmother had so 
often told me I was quite exceptionally naughty, 
and this Sunday at least, after such a week, 1 felt 
it must be true ; more especially because my father 
himself, having come in at the climax of one of 
my passions, and not knowing the cause, had 
looked gravely distressed at me. 

That Sunday afternoon it happened that my 
father was occupied with visitors, and Piers and I 
crept away to our usual resource, through the 
field to the foundry-yard, to pay a visit to Peuben 
Pengelly and Priscy his wife. They lived at the 
gate-house, and we were welcomed as usual. But 
I was very unhappy, feeling like a little exile even 
there. While Piers was sitting complacently on 
old Priscy Pengelly ’s knee, enjoying her adoration 
and his bit of apple pastry, I, quite beyond the 
consolation of caresses and pastries, sat and nursed 
my sorrows on the little wooden stool in the 
porch at Peuben’ s feet. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


73 


The very quiet of the place seemed to irritate 
me. I had so many hammers beating, and com- 
plicated wheels revolving in my little heart and 
brain, that the usual din and rattle of the works 
would have been more congenial to me. 

Everything but me was so good and quiet and 
fit for Sunday ! The water playing over the idle 
wheel, the lazy occasional creaking of some of 
the machinery (like a yawn of Pluto awakened 
out of sleep), the quiet noiseless investigations 
being pursued by Priscy’s cat among heaps of 
iron, and stationary machines she would not have 
dared to come near on work-days ; the absence of 
all the clamorous busy life that filled the place 
at other times, and the peace and shining clean- 
ness of Reuben’s house and face, always made 
that porch seem to me the most Sunday-like 
place in the world. And I liked to hear old Reu- 
ben and Priscy talk, in a way I only half under- 
stood, but always, I felt, in good kind voices 
about good and happy things. 

But that day the disquiet within was too deep 
to be soothed by the quiet without. 

All Reuben’s benevolent attempts to draw me 
into happy childish talk had failed, and at length, 
Piers having fallen asleep on Priscy’s knee, and 
Priscy having fallen fast asleep too, Reuben looked 
tenderly, down at me, and seeing, I suppose, the 
dull, stony look so unnatural on a childish face, he 
said — 

“ My lamb, what makes thee so wisht ? ” 


n 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


It happened that just then I was watching a 
little drama being enacted on the opposite side of 
the .yard, between Priscy’s cat and a large brown 
hen. Anxiously the poor mother, ignorant of the 
restraints imposed on pussy by our presence, had 
been calling her chickens to her, and at length had 
succeeded in attracting the last of them, from the 
seductions of crumbs and grains, under the shelter 
of her wings. And there she sat, tenderly cluck- 
ing over her little ones nestled close to her, and 
heroically confronting the enemy. 

I had watched the little parable with a strange, 
choking bitterness ; and, at first, when Eeuben 
spoke, I could say nothing. 

But when he stooped down and stood me be- 
side his knee, and then took me on it, and held 
my hands so tenderly in his great sinewy hand, the 
first ice-crust of my reserve began to melt, and I 
said quietly — I felt too despairing for tears — 

“ Eeuben, I cannot be good. I cannot. I 
have done so many sins and iniquities. I think 
God is going to give up dealing with me.” 

I suppose he thought my case not very hope- 
less, for he smiled most complacently, and said — 

“ Give thee up, poor lamb ! At last ! Why 
He did not give up dealing with me ! ” 

I did not feel the force of the consolation. 
What could Eeuben have done as naughty as I 
had ? I only shook my head. 

“ Why, what be ye thinking about Miss Bride, 
my dear ? ” came out in his hearty voice. “ The 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


75 


Lord is good, good • with poor hardened old sin- 
ners, and to thee ! an innocent babe like thee ! ” 

I felt much more like a hardened sinner, what- 
ever that meant, than like an innocent babe ; and 
suddenly something that had lain hidden at the 
bottom of my heart rose up at his words — some- 
thing I could never have said to father, and had 
scarcely said even to myself. 

“ Reuben,” I said, looking straight up into his 
eyes, “ is God good ? To you Reuben, but not to 
me — not to me. He took away mother ! Even 
those little chickens have somewhere warm and 
soft to hide ; and I have nowhere. God took 
away mother from me. He must have known I 
should never be good afterwards. He is not good 
to me.” 

Happily for me the old man did not crush the 
helpless cry of anguish with a reproof, as if it had 
been a mere wilful cry of revolt. But a look of 
pain came over his face, such as I should have felt 
if Piers had struck father ! And he said, looking 
reverently upwards — 

“ Poor lamb ! Poor motherless babe ! She 
knows not what she says. She wants to be good, 
and she doesn’t know how Thou wants it ! — Thou 
who hast died for it ! ” 

“ I do want to be good, Reuben,” I said, afraid 
I had not been quite honest. “ But I want — oh, 
I want mother ! ” 

“ My lamb, my lamb,” he said, “ you want 
God ! Mother is happy, for she loves God. She 


76 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


did when she was here, dear soul, and now she is 
with Him and loves Him better, for she knows 
how God loves.” 

“ Is mother happy, Reuben ? ” I said, roused 
to an unwonted daring. “ How can she be happy ? 
If she is living and awake, how can she he happy, 
and I so unhappy, and not good, and never going 
to be good ? Why, even I could not be happy on 
fathers knee, and father pleased with me, if Piers 
were hurt or naughty. And how could mother ? 
She loved us more than that. I know — I know — 
if God would let her — mother would come back 
from anywhere — from anywhere — to help us and 
make us good. It is God who took her away and 
will not ever let her come back. And how can I 
pretend to love God, or say He is good to me ? ” 
Reuben said nothing, but kept stroking my 
hands. I was afraid he was vexed ; but when I 
glanced up at him I thought he had never looked 
so kind, although great tears were on his cheeks. 

And then gently, as if I had been an infant, he 
carried me into his little house, and shut the door, 
and knelt down, with me beside him, and prayed 
till the drops stood on his forehead and the tears 
rained down his face. 

He said something like this — 

“ O, blessed Father ! Pity this poor wisht, 
forlorn babe. She has lost her mother, and she 
has lost sight of Thee. She doesn’t understand. 
She thinks Thou art turning away Thy face from 
her, and not caring for her. And all the time it 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


77 

is Thou who art stooping down and likening Thy- 
self to anything — to that poor, helpless fool of a 
hen gathering her chickens — just to make us un- 
derstand how Thou lovest us — calling, calling ; 
spreading out Thy wings for her — for her ! Lord, 
make the little one understand ; make the babe 
hear and see. 

“Blessed Lord Jesus, Thou knowest how we 
want to hear, and touch, and see ; above all, the 
little ones. Thou earnest that we might touch 
and see. Thou tookest them in thine arms, and 
laid Thine hands on them, that they might touch 
and see. Thou hast let them nail Thee to the 
Cross that we might feel and see. Ah, good 
Shepherd ! And this little lamb has lost sight of 
Thee altogether ! But Thou hearest her crying. 
Lord, it’s only the lamb bleating for its mother — 
Thy little lamb bleating for Thee ! Take her 
home on Thy shoulders, Lord. Take her home to 
Thy heart, and make her happy, and make her 
good.” 

Then he rose and sat down, and took me on 
his knees again. I leaned my head on his shoulder 
and was quite quiet — quiet in my heart too. 

“ My lamb,” he said, “ that’s it ; that’s all. 
You want God. And God wants you to be good. 
He gave his own Son for us. He would have left 
mother with you if He could. It seems to me He 
wants you just to look up, as it were, and see 
mother smiling on you in heaven, as sure enough 
she is ; and then turning round to Him, just that 


78 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


you may follow her eyes , and turn round to Him, 
too, and see how He is smiling on her, and on you 
both. Child, child ! mother is happy ! And she 
would never be happy unless she knew God was 
good, and good to you. Follow her looks up to 
His face, my lamb, and you will see what she 
sees/’ 

All the time I had not cried. I had felt too 
naughty and wretched. But those words went to 
my heart. 

“ Mother knows God is good, and good to me” 

And I did try to follow her looks upwards to 
His face. 

And He helped me ; He did not give up deal- 
ing with me. 

My new treasure was soon tested. For I 
remember the very evening after that Sunday 
afternoon talk with Reuben had begun to clear 
things a little to me, I ventured to say to my step- 
mother when I kissed her for the night, that I 
really hoped now I should be good, for I thought 
I had a little love to „God, and He would help me. 

My heart was glowing, yet it cost me much to 
stammer out those words. To me it was like a 
confession. It was in the Oak parlor. She was 
looking out of the window. She turned round, a 
little surprised, and questioned me with her eyes 
till I colored crimson ; but she only said : — 

“Very well, Bridget. I am sure I hope you 
will be good. You are liable to very violent 
ebullitions of feeling. I think it was two days 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


79 


since yon called me cruel because your kitten was 
whipped for stealing cream, and three days since 
you tried to take up yotfr brother and kiss him 
when he was naughty and was put in the corner, 
and threw yourself in a frantic rage with me be- 
cause I would not let you, which your father saw ; 
and four days since you sat sobbing half-an-hour, 
as if your heart would break, because you had torn 
your pinafore, and had to mend it, instead of play- 
ing in the garden. You are subject to very vehe- 
ment changes of emotion. I suppose this is one 
of them. I hope it will last, and that you will in 
future wash your hands in time for dinner, and 
keep your hair smooth. 1 judge by fruits.” 

I crept humbly away, with the feeling one has 
in seeing the dog in Landseer’s picture, with wist- 
ful eyes and appealing paws, entreating the parrot 
for a crumb of cheese. 

Yet I believe the hail-showers and glaciers of 
my childhood were good for me, as well as its sun- 
shine and soft dews. I went away saddened, but 
no more chilled to the heart ; for I had learned 
that the sunshine and the dews, and soft brooding 
warm wings of ever-present love were at least as 
real as the cold. The key was in my hand ; it has 
never been quite lost since ; and secret after secret 
is unlocked to me whenever I touch the doors of 
hidden chambers with it. 

So, as it happened, my feeling after mother 
became at last a feeling after God, and finding 


80 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


Him, which I suppose, was part at least of what 
He meant. 

It was on the Sunday after this that I was 
thinking I wished mother had been among some 
“ goodly fellowship ” or u glorious company ” or 
“ noble army ” mentioned in the Te Deum , that I 
might have been sure she was among those we 
sang about as praising with us. And then it 
occurred to me that the Holy Church throughout 
the world could not mean the little bit of it where 
we are and which we see ; where the prophets and 
apostles are not any longer. 

I remembered Reuben’s words, and all at once 
a heavy roof seemed lifted off from the world, and 
I followed mother’s eyes up to his face, and saw 
that the church of our old town was only a little 
corner of the great Church throughout the world 
which is always praising Him ; and that I, down 
in the dark room, and mother up in the light 
where she was waiting for me, without anything 
between, were singing our Te Deum together. 

Thus the service gradually grew to shine out 
on me bit by bit, like far-off fields on our own 
moors lighted up one by one by the sun. 

My attention to the sermon was less endanger- 
ed by external objects ; for I was always caused 
during its delivery to subside into the depths of a 
great pew, above whose walls nothing was visible 
to me but my uncie, Parson Fyford, the top of 
Miss Felicity’s whalebone hood, the bows in Ma- 
dam Glanvil’s bonnet, which used periodically to 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


81 


sway about and disappear, and then to recover and 
erect themselves inexplicably in a defiant manner ; 
the grave face of Reuben Pengelly above the choir 
gallery, and the trees waving in the churchyard 
outside the windows. 

I remember wondering why my uncle Fyford 
put on quite a different voice from that in which 
he spoke to us during the week, and whether I 
should ever be expected to understand what he 
said. 

But my most vivid recollections of the sermon, 
especially after that Sunday afternoon with Reu- 
ben in the foundry-yard, were of a time of delicious 
rest, when the two people who were kindest to me 
in the world were looking serenely down upon me, 
and Piers, being by father’s express sanction, al- 
lowed to go to sleep, was leaning his sleepy little 
head against me, and I was feeling like a little 
mother to him, with one hand around him, and 
the other hand nestled in father’s ; while above us 
was the dear sacred name on a white marble tablet, 
and a consciousness of a sacred corner outside in 
the churchyard, and of something more sacred and 
tenderer still above us in the sky ; a light deeper 
than the sunlight, a smile kinder than father’s, 
embracing mother and us all. 

And eager and restless as I was, the sermon 
did not seem long to me ; and a heaven “ where 
congregations ne’er break up,” would not have 
seemed to me a terrible threat at all. 


6 



CHAPTER YI. 



excess of theology was not the excess 
prevalent in Abbot’s Weir in my child- 
hood. “High” and “low” in those 
days had reference rather to social than 
to ecclesiastical elevations ; and “ broad ” was ap- 
plied to acres or to cloth, not to opinions. 

Whatever purpose the laity went to church 
for, severe critical analysis of my uncle Fy ford’s 
or his curate’s sermons was not one of them. 

I remember not unfrequently hearing strong 
comments on the extravagance of some people’s 
garments and the imperfections of others’, but 
never any derogatory remarks on the extrava- 
gances or defects, or “ unsoundness ” of any kind, 
of the various doctrines delivered to us. 

Occasionally I recollect my father’s gentle pro- 
testing that the Doctor — my uncle was a D. D. — 
had “given us that again a little too soon;” but 
a suspicion that sermons were intended to be trans- 
ferred beyond the church doors for discussion (or, 
I am afraid also, for practice), never crossed my 
mind. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


83 


Indeed, all the sects represented in our little 
town had subsided into a state of mutual toler- 
ance which might have seemed exemplary, had 
not this tolerance extended to some things which 
all Christian sects are supposed not to tolerate. 

Protests were not the style of the day. “ Against 
the stream” scarcely any one seemed pulling. The 
effect was a drowsy tranquillity. The various 
pulpits would as little have ventured to fulminate 
against the enormities of the slave-trade, the in- 
toxication common at all convivial gatherings, the 
rioting at the races on our down, the cruelties of 
our bull-baitings in the market-place, as against 
each other. 

“Were the feelings of the congregation to be 
wantonly disregarded? ’’ my uncle Fyford would 
have pleaded. “Had not one of Madam Glan- 
viFs sons been a slave-holder ? and had not the 
enormities of the slave-trade been greatly exagger- 
ated? Were there any of the most respectable of 
the congregation who did not occasionally take a 
glass too much ? (drunkenness was not then a 
mere low habit of the 4 lower classes ; ’) and were 
the little ‘ harmless frailties’ of the most respect- 
able of the parishioners to be wantonly dragged 
into the light ? And even the i lower orders,’ no 
doubt, must also have their amusements ; poor 
creatures, their lot of toil was hard enough already 
without being further embittered by Puritanical 
austerities. What was the occasional discomfort 
of a bull, a creature without a soul (and without a 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


'Si 

literature to celebrate its wrongs), compared with 
the importance of keeping up a manly, ancient 
English pastime, a healthy outlet, no doubt, for a 
certain— brutality, we will not call it, but — a 
certain recklessness of blood inherent in the very 
vigor of the Saxon nature ? Was there not even 
a text for it ? Had not St. Paul said (possibly 
not in precisely the same connection), c Did God 
take care for oxen ? 5 And should we be more 
merciful than St. Paul ? Ho ; let such pretences 
be left to the over-refined sensibilities of a Jean 
Jacques Rousseau, to a nation which could guil- 
lotine its sovereign and weep over a sentimental 
love-story (especially if the love were misplaced), 
or to the gloomy asceticism of an austere Puritan- 
ism now happily for England extinct.” 

I used sometimes to suspect from the vehe- 
mence with which my uncle defended this custom, 
he being at once a tranquil and merciful man, 
that his conscience was a little uneasy at the suffer- 
ings to which, as a devoted entomologist, he ex- 
posed the various beetles which were impaled in 
the glass cases in the vicarage. He could always 
be roused on the subject of the nervous sensibili- 
ties of animals, and I remember a hot debate be- 
tween him and my father on Shakespeare’s lines — 

' " The beetle that we tread upon 
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as keen 
As when a giant dies,” — 

which my uncle characterised as sentimental and 
pernicious trash. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


85 


I believe he would very gladly have stretched 
the same conviction to the nervous sensibilities of 
negroes ; but his candor was too much for him ; 
and with regard to the abolition of the slave-trade 
he had to take up other grounds, such as the gen- 
eral tendency of Africans to make each other mis- 
erable in Africa, if let alone, and the antecedent 
improbability that “ Providence ” would have cre- 
ated a substance so attractive to white people as 
sugar, and so impossible for white people to culti- 
vate, and would have prospered our sugar planta- 
tions and sugar planters as It had, unless It had 
meant that sugar should be cultivated by blacks, 
and consequently that blacks should be brought 
from Africa. 

Thus it happened, in consequence of all these 
various arguments, or rather in consequence of the 
prepossessions by which so many of our arguments 
are predetermined, that Abbot’s Weir protested 
against very little, at that time, either in church 
or chapel. My uncle did indeed periodically pro 
test against various evils mostly remote or obso- 
lete, such as Popery on the anniversary of the 
Gunpowder Plot, the heresies of the fourth cen- 
tury on Trinity Sunday, or the schisms of the 
seventeenth century on the festival of King 
Charles the Martyr. 

But he rejoiced to think that we had fallen on 
different times, when Englishmen had learned to 
live in harmony. 

Did not he himself indeed exemplify this har- 


86 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


mony by a cordial if somewhat condescending in- 
tercourse with the Rev. Josiah Rabbidge, the 
mild successor of the fiery Cromwellian minister 
who, at the Restoration, had been driven from the 
pulpit of the parish church ? 

Mild indeed had that Presbyterian congrega- 
tion become, in doctrine, in discipline, and in zeal; 
and difficult would it have been for any one short 
of a Spanish Inquisitor of the keenest scent to fas- 
ten a quarrel on theological grounds on the Rev. 
Josiah Rabbidge, a gentle and shy little man 
whose personality was all but overwhelmed under 
the combined weight of a tall and aggressive wife, 
the fourteen children with which she had enriched 
him, the instruction of the boys of the town when 
they emerged from the mixed Dame’s School of 
Miss Felicity Benbow, and a congregation which 
it was not easy to keep awake, especially on Sun- 
day afternoons. 

Of this last fact I had personal experiences, 
one of our maids being sometimes in the habit of 
taking us to the chapel on Sunday afternoons, 
when uncle Fyford was preaching in his second 
church in the country ; attracted, I believe, not by 
the theology, but by the greater brevity of the 
service, and the greater comfort of the cushions. 

I do not remember being struck with any great 
difference, except that Mr. Rabbidge’s prayers 
were shorter, and not in the Prayer-book, and 
that he generally used the term “ the Deity ” 
where my uncle said u Providence.’’ 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


87 


I suppose the terms were characteristic in both 
cases. Mr. Rabbidge’s element, when he could 
escape to it, was literature ; my uncle’s, nature. 
To both human life was a subordinate thing. To 
my uncle, indeed, it was brought near by the 
household presence of his orphan nephew, Dick 
Fyford, and three thousand parishioners, who had 
at intervals to be married, christened, and buried ; 
and to Mr. Rabbidge by the constant inevitable 
pressure of a wife to be propitiated, fourteen chil- 
dren to be fed, a large portion of the boy-human- 
ity of Abbot’s Weir to be taught, and that somno- 
lent congregation to be kept awake. Still, to both 
all this tide of human life was a disturbing acci- 
dent, from which they escaped when practicable — 
Mr. Rabbidge to his dearly-prized ancient folios, 
and my uncle to his beetles. And as must happen, 
I think, to all from whom the human life around 
recedes, the Divine seemed to recede also ; and on 
the very pursuits they cared for more than for 
humanity, fell a lifelessness and a barrenness. 
Nature herself refuses to be more than a scientific 
catalogue to those who subordinate humanity to 
her. The thoughts and lives of the men of the 
past become mere fossils to those who neglect for 
them the living men and women of the present. 
If the present does not live for us, how can the 
past ? If our “ neighbor ” has no personality we 
reverence and supremely care for, how can nature 
be to us more than a collection of things? If 
humanity does not come home to our hearts, how 


88 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


can God ? Thus, in a measure, moderated indeed 
by the merciful duties they were inclined to look 
on as hindrances, the law of love avenged itself. 
Nature became to my uncle not so much a living 
wonder and glory, as a storehouse to furnish glass- 
cases for insects; and history to Mr. Rabbidge 
rather a museum of antiquities than a record of 
continuous life ; and God not so much the Father 
and the Saviour as the “ Providence ” which 
arranges with marvellous ingenuity the mechanism 
of the universe, or the x “ Deity ” which dwells afar 
off* in thick darkness at the sources of History. 

Of the Incarnation, or of the Cross, they had 
little need, in such a view of nature and of human 
life. 

It was probably, therefore, rather by an acci- 
dent of position that my uncle retained the 
dogma in his creed, while Mr. Rabbidge had 
glided, unperceived by his congregation, and pos- 
sibly by himself, into a mild and most unag- 
gressive Arianism. 

And yet in all this I speak rather of their 
theories, and of what these would have made 
them, than of themselves; or rather of what they 
would have made themselves than of what God 
made them. 

My uncle could not, with the best intentions, 
live for beetles, nor Mr. Rabbidge for books. 

That rollicking cousin of ours, Dick Fyford, 
was perpetually plucking him back to the roughest 
realities of human life in its crudest form of boy ; 


AGAINST TEE STREAM . 


89 


to the crudest form of British boy, a boy with an 
invincible inclination for the sea. 

And to poor Mr. Rabbidge’s discipline, no 
doubt, all Abbot’s Weir contributed, from Mrs. 
Rabbidge to Piers and Dick Fyford, as Mrs. Danes- 
combe did to mine. What fossils, what mon- 
sters, or what intolerable bores we should become 
if we could get rid of the things and persons in 
our lives we are apt to call hindrances ! 

The intercourse between my uncle and Mr. 
Rabbidge was, no doubt, made more amicable by 
the manifest differences in their persons and posi- 
tions. There could, my uncle felt, be no danger 
of a man forgetting the social distinctions caused 
by the union of Church and State, who had, to 
begin with, to raise his eyes eighteen inches before 
they encountered his own ; whose rapid, hesitating 
utterance contrasted characteristically with my 
uncle’s slow, round, sonorous enunciation ; who 
had to compress sixteen people into „ the old Ab- 
bey gate-house, an appendage of the rectory for 
which my uncle declined to receive any but a 
pepper-corn rent; to whom the glebe cows and 
vegetables were as serviceable as to the rector him- 
self. 

Not that Mr. Rabbidge’s independence of 
thought was in any way affected by these favors, 
or by the necessity of accepting them. No sense 
of favors past or to come would have made him 
indifferent to the value of a Greek particle, not, 
I mean, only in the Athanasian creed, but any- 


90 


AGAINST THE STREAM . 


where : and he had heresies from the Oxford pro- 
nunciation of Greek and Latin, in defence of 
which he would have suffered any persecution, 
civil or domestic. In this the spirit of his Puri- 
tan ancestors survived in him, and not even the 
eloquent and forcible Mrs. Rabbidge herself 
could have constrained him to any compliance 
beyond silence. 

But my uncle’s sense of ecclesiastical dignity 
was satisfied by conferring these benefits. It was 
not necessary by any extra chill and polish of 
manner further to accentuate a difference already 
sufficiently marked. And therefore the inter- 
course was of the friendliest kind ; Mr. Rabbidge’s 
fourteen were welcome at all times to enter the 
rectory garden through the arched door, which 
connected it with the little garden of the gate- 
house, Dick Fyford being after all a far more 
dangerous inmate than the whole fourteen to- 
gether. 

Meanwhile Mr. Rabbidge found recondite al- 
lusions to beetles in the classics, Greek and Latin, 
and my uncle returned the compliment bjr refer- 
ring in his articles in the Sentimental Magazine to 
quotations suggested by his “ learned friend Mr. 
Rabbidge.” One point my uncle never yielded 
to “ separatists.” As an orthodox Churchman, 
and as the minister of a State religion, he could 
not be expected to concede to the alumnus of a 
Dissenting academy the title of Reverend. It 
would, he considered, be to eliminate all signifi- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


91 


cance from the word. “ Titles,” said my uncle, 
u are titles ; to accord the right to confer them on 
any self-elected community was to undermine the 
citadel of all authority. Persons who began with 
calling a Presbyterian teacher Reverend, might 
naturally end with calling their sovereign “ citi- 
zen.” Mr. Pabbidge would, he knew, compre- 
hend his motives.” And Mr. Pabbidge did, and 
never protested. 

For they had the link said to be stronger than 
a common love — a common hate; if so fiery a 
word may be applied to any sentiment possible in 
zones so temperate. 

They both hated “ Jacobinism” — my uncle as 
a man of property, which any convulsions might 
endanger, and Mr. Pabbidge as a peaceable and 
not very valiant citizen, who in any contest was 
not likely to get the upper hand. 

And they both disapproved of Methodism, the 
only aggressive form of religion they were ac- 
quainted with — my uncle condemning it chiefly 
as having a “ Jacobinical” tendency to set up the 
“ lower orders” and to “ turn the world upside 
down,” and Mr. Pabbidge as an enthusiasm likely 
to set people’s hearts above their heads, and so 
turn their brains upside down. 

And yet, such are the inconsistencies of the 
best balanced minds, Peuben Pengelly continued 
every Sunday morning to play the principal bass- 
viol in the choir gallery, every Sunday evening 
to take a principal part in the prayers and exhor- 


92 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


tations in the little Methodist meeting, and every 
day and night, everywhere when he was wanted 
to pray beside the dying beds or broken hearts 
among my uncle’s parishioners. 

And there were instances in which Mr. Rab- 
bidge had even been known to call poor Reuben 
in, when he had found his somnolent and respect- 
able congregation roused by some dim memory 
of the old Puritan teaching, for which their fore- 
fathers had fought, or by some of the terrible 
realities of life or death to an unquenchable 
'thirst for something which he- did not compre- 
hend, ' which neither the mild Arianism of the 
chapel, nor the mild orthodoxy of the church 
afforded, but which Reuben seemed able to give ; 
some dim orphaned feeling after One who is more 
than u Providence” and tc the Deity,” whom Reu- 
ben trusted and called on, in no very classical 
English, as “ the Lord, the living Lord, the Lord 
who died for us and liveth evermore, the loving, 
pitying, and providing God and Father of us all.” 

My uncle and Mr. Rabbidge both thought it 
very strange ; but human nature, especially in the 
“ lower orders” and in women, is a strange com- 
pound ; what classical author has not in one phrase 
or another said so ? 

Principle, sober principle, the incontrovertible 
precepts of morality, ought to be enough for ra- 
tional humanity ; but in all the relations of life, 
and even it seemed in religion, men and women, 
especially women, could not be satisfied without 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


93 


something more than sober principle to guide 
their judgment ; they must have their hearts stir- 
red, they must laugh for joy, and tremble, and 
weep — they must have emotion ; and as this was 
so, perhaps it was well that a man, on the whole, 
so respectful to authority, and so trustworthy as 
Reuben Pengelly, was to be found to supply the 
material. 

Or as Reuben put it 

u The devil took care there should always be 
sinners, and the Lord took care there should 
always be saints beyond the reach of anything but 
his blessed Gospel and his good Spirit.” 



CHAPTER VII. 


PPOSITE our windows, across the Corn 
Market, was a long, low, rambling old 
house, once a dower-house of the Glanvil 
family, but long before my recollection 
the abode of Miss Felicity Benbow, the guide and 
the terror of successive generations of juvenile 
Abbot’s Weir. 

Piers and I, sitting on the window-seat of the 
Stone parlor, frequently observed the children go- 
ing in and out of that wide-arclied door. The 
house, and Miss Felicity herself, had a kind of 
horrible fascination for us. Sooner or later we 
knew those solemn portals would open on us, and 
engulf us' also in that unknown world within, 
where dwelt the dark, shadowy powers of disci- 
pline and knowledge, represented in the person of 
Miss Felicity. 

Thither every morning and afternoon we saw 
the children, a little older than ourselves — some, 
it was rumored, not older — tend in twos or threes, 
or one by one, with lingering and sober steps, the 
small satchel on the shoulder, and occasionally the 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


95 


book, too late consulted, being anxiously conned 
over ; and hence in a body, at the appointed hour, 
we saw them issue with softened voices and quiet, 
sobered paces for a few steps beyond the door, as 
far, at least, as the range of Miss Felicity’s windows, 
subdued by the restraints of those unknown pow- 
ers within ; and then through the narrow streets, 
in different directions, we heard the joyous voices 
sound louder and freer as they distanced the 
solemn precints, scattering frolic and music through 
the town as they separated to their different 
homes. 

There, also, on wet days, the various maids of 
the richer families gathered with hoods and cloaks 
for their young masters and mistresses. And 
there, every morning and evening, the aristocrat 
of the school, Madam Grlanvil’s little orphan grand- 
daughter, was brought and fetched, by the old 
black butler in livery, on her white pony ; a grave, 
retiring child, with dark, pallid complexion and 
overhanging brows, and with large, wistful brown 
eyes, which often seemed to meet mine, and always 
seemed to speak to me from some mysterious new 
world. The rest of the children thought her 
proud and supercilious; but those strange, deep 
eyes, with their wonderful occasional lights — not 
the dewy sparkle of English eyes, but a flash as 
from tropical skies — always had an irresistible 
attraction for me. They had a wistful longing in 
them, like Pluto’s eyes, and yet a depth I could 
iiot fathom, winch always drew me back question- 


96 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ing and guessing. Something between the mys- 
teries of the dumb animal-world and the mysteries 
of the invisible spirit-world was in them. I could 
not tell why, but they made me think at once of 
the dog Pluto, and of my mother. 

I could watch no one while she was there, 
and I grew to feel at last that the attraction must 
be mutual, for she always guided the white pony 
near our windows, and in a furtive way used, I 
felt, to watch Piers and me, although she always 
looked away if our eyes met. Occasionally, more- 
over, on stormy days, an old black nurse used to 
appear with two black footmen and a sedan-chair, 
instead of the one negro with the white pony. 
The black nurse used to apparel the young lady in 
a mass of orange and scarlet splendors, and enter 
the chair with her, and then in stately procession 
Miss Amice Glanvil would be borne away to the 
fine old manor-house among the woods on the hill, 
called Court. 

Altogether, therefore, Miss Amice was to me 
like a tropical dream of glow and gloom, such as 
our temperate zone could not produce ; a creature 
from a region of splendors and shadows, altogether 
deeper and richer than ours ; a region where the 
birds and flowers are scarlet and gold ; a land 6f 
earthquakes and hurricanes, and wildernesses of 
beauty, of magnificence, and tragedy. 

For I knew that those black people were 
slaves, and the gleam of their white teeth, and 
the flash of their brilliant eyes when they pulled 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


97 


their woolly locks, as they used good-humoredly to 
do to us children watching at the window, used 
not to terrify me as it did many of the children in 
the town, nor to amuse me, but to make me feel 
inclined to cry. They always made me think of 
i Pluto when he was chained up in the kennel and 
I fawned and whined on us. Only Pluto was at 
home, and they were not ; and Pluto was a dog, 
and they were not ; which made all the difference, 
I thought, for him and for them. They were 
, called also by the classical names which in France 
and in Italy have retained their dignity, but in 
I England were only given in a sort of kindly con- 
tempt or facetious pity to dogs and to negroes. I 
had heard the black woman call them Cato and 
Caesar ; and they called her Chloe. 

Moreover we had, through Reuben Pengelly, 

I an acquaintance with Chloe’s history, which gave 
us a glimpse into the tragedy which underlay the 
: splendors of Amice Grlanvil’s life. 

I Chloe had a whole woman’s world of her own, 
in her own country in Africa, not dead, living and 
needing her, but buried to her irrevocably and for- 
ever. 

She used to come now and then, when she was 
allowed, to Reuben’s prayer-meetings, and some- 
times rather to confuse him by the fervency of her 
amens, and of her shrill quavering singing, in the 
refrains of the hymns. One evening she still fur- 
ther bewildered the kindly man by breaking out 
suddenly in a passion of sobs. 

7 


98 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Reuben told us the story on the next Sunday, 
in the silent foundry-yard. 

“ I couldn’t for the life of me tell why,” he 
said, he having no oratorical vanity to explain 
such emotion. “ I was only talking to the folks 
quite plain and quiet how the blessed Lord sat 
weary by the well, and asked the poor woman for 
a drink from her pitcher, and how she was slow to 
give it Him. Chloe staid after the rest had gone, 
still rocking herself to and fro, as if she were rock- 
ing a baby, hiding her face, and sobbing fit to 
break her heart. So I went up to her soft and 
quiet, not to fluster her, and I said, c The Lord 
has touched thee, poor dear soul. Cheer up. He 
wounds and He can bind up.’ ‘Never, Massa 
Reuben, never? said she (poor soul, she always 
calls me Massa, she knows no better). ‘Never 
bind up. He Jcnows 'better than to try. Let the 
wounds bleed. No other way.’ And then, in their 
sudden way, like children, she looked up and 
showed all her white teeth, and smiled, and down- 
right laughed. It was more than a man could 
make out. ‘ It was all along of that pitcher and 
that well,’ said she. And then she told me how 
she had gone to the well one evening, years ago, 
by her hut, away in Africa, with her pitcher, to 
fetch water for her children, with her baby in her 
arms. The children lay sick with fever. But at 
the well the slave-hunters found her, gagged her, 
bound her, forced her away to the coast, and 
squeezed her down with hundreds of others into 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


99 


the slave-ship. She heard the sick children, day 
and night, moaning — moaning for her. Many of 
the poor creatures with her refused to eat, and 
many died ; but she had the baby, and tried to 
live. And as she went on telling she cried again, 
and then she smiled again. 4 Never mind me, 
Massa Reuben,’ said she ; 4 it was only that pitcher. 
Seemed to me all the place, and all the years 
melted away. I was at home again at that well 
again with the pitcher, and instead of the slave- 
hunters, the good Lord himself stood there, and 
said, 4 Give me to drink.’ And she seemed to 
answer Him, her pitcher was gone, all was gone, 
she had nothing to draw with and there was no- 
thing to draw. And He said, all smiling, it was 
not the water He wanted, but just herself. 4 Just 
me,’ said she, 4 sitting there weary, just as He did 
! once, poor old Chloe, that He died for; me and 
: my bit of love.’ And she saw the hands and the 
j feet all torn and bleeding, worse than dust on them 
J that a woman’s tears might wash away, blood on 
them to wash away her sins, and she seemed just 
to take her heart, as it was all dry and empty, and 
give it Him. 4 And He looked as glad,’ said she, 
4 as a thirsty man for a drink of water. All for me, 
Massa Reuben, all because he cared to be loved by 
me.’ ” And then Reuben said, ^ 4 1 cried too, just 
as she did, poor soul ! The baby died just as the 
voyage was over, and then when they came on 
shore Squire Granvil bought her for a nurse to 
Miss Amice. His wife had just died at her birth, 


100 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


and the poor fool loves Miss Amice like her own. 
It’s wonderful,” concluded Reuben, “ what them 
poor creatures will cling to and catch at, just for 
anything to love, though for the matter of that, 
Priscy’s no better. The women are like enough 
all the world over, poor souls. God bless them.” 

Miss Felicity used sometimes to descend to the 
door with the Jittle lady, and watch her across the 
market-place, which gave us ample opportunity of 
studying that physiognomy so important to our 
future fate. 

She was a tall and rather a majestic woman, 
with a stiff, erect carriage (a perpetual monition to 
all lounging little boys and girls), keen black eyes, 
high Roman features, and a severe mouth reso- 
lutely closed, as if her life had been a battle with 
difficulties harder to conquer than the little mis- 
chievous elves who could never evade her penetrat- 
ing eyes, or the terrible instrument of justice they 
guided. 

Yet it was not a face which repelled me, or 
made me feel afraid. I felt rather drawn towards 
her, as a kind of tutelary Athena ; not very close, 
not exactly as a child to her heart, but as a subject 
to her feet, with a kind of confidence of justice in 
those steady eyes, and those stern, grave lips. 
There was no fretfulness in the lines of the fur- 
rowed brow, in the curve of the mouth ; no uncer- 
tainty of temper in the large keen eyes. If she 
had carried the A£gis, I do not think I should 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


101 


have had any fear of her petrifying the wrong 
people by turning it on them. 

There were two other inhabitants of that old 
mansion besides Miss Felicity. 

Every fine morning in summer, before people 
were up, and every fine evening in winter, as it 
began to grow dusk, from that arched door, where 
poured in and out every day the joyous tide of 
young life, came forth two very different figures, 
one the stately form of Miss Felicity, and the 
other a man tall as herself, but bowed and stoop- 
ing, moving with uncertain and uneven gait, and 
leaning on Miss Felicity’s arm. They crept away 
into the country by the least steep of the three 
roads which led out of the town, and in about an 
hour re-entered the old house and disappeared, 
and the stooping tall man’s figure was seen no 
more till the next day. It was believed they went 
always as far as a certain ancient well by the road- 
side, called the Benit or Blessed Well; for they 
were often seen resting on the stone bench beside 
it, and had never been found further on. 

It was curious how people respected the mys- 
tery Miss Felicity chose to consider thrown around 
that ruined life. Keen as her perceptions were, 
sharp and definite her words on every other sub- 
ject, around him she gathered a veil of fond 
excuses and illusions, so. thin that all the town saw 
through it, and yet all the town recognized it for 
her sake. 

To us children, indeed, something of the mys- 


102 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


tery really existed, taking the form of a half-con- 
cealing, half-glorifying ‘mist, which surrounded 
Miss Felicity with a halo, and through which the 
tall, bent form loomed, at once a tower and a bea- 
con, like a ruined church set on one of the heights 
along our coasts, once meant to be a sacred shrine, 
but now, the sacredness shattered out of it, surviv- 
ing only as a warning against wreck. 

Lieutenant Benbow had been in the army, we 
knew, and had been a line handsome man, and had 
grown suddenly old in middle life, not altogether 
by misfortune, but by something sadder, which 
hung like a sword of Damocles over the festival 
of life for any of us to whom life was only 
feasting. 

To me especially those two had a terrible, yet 
tender interest. 

Lieutenant Benbow had been to Miss Felicity 
what Piers was to me. She had loved him, de- 
lighted in him, lived for him after the death of her 
father. (Happily for herself the mother had died 
early.) She had loved him with the kind of blind 
love which some think the truest and most wo- 
manly. To me the blindness always seems to 
come, not from the love, but from the little alloy 
of pride and selfishness in the love which so far 
makes it false. It is possible so to love another as 
ourselves that the very love comes to partake of the 
nature of self-love, exaggerating, concealing, untrue, 
unjust, falsely excusing, falsely gilding. And yet 
not quite. The little grain of true love at the bot- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


103 


tom of the most selfish affection makes it bj that 
grain at least better than mere selfishness. The 
miser who half starves his children in hoarding for 
them has surely in his hoard something a degree 
more sacred than there can be in that of the miser 
who hoards for himself alone. And with Miss 
Felicity that grain of true love was large, and for 
herself, at least, fruitful ; fruitful, at least, in sacri- 
fice. 

Lieutenant Benbow had followed his father’s 
profession. Their means were not large, but her 
delight had been to have his appointments as 
choice and abundant as those of the richest. And 
the idol had accepted the homage ; repaid it, even, 
by such small and symbolical acknowledgments as 
can be expected from duly incensed idols. 

She knew he had at least one fatal habit. In 
a day when all gentlemen drank more than was 
good for them, he drank more than most, and, un- 
fortunately, could stand less. 

Once only Miss Felicity’s eyes were all but 
opened. He persuaded a lovely young Quaker 
girl to elope with him and to marry him. 

Miss Felicity did not wonder at the Quaker 
maiden’s infatuation, but she did wonder at her 
brother’s. The Quaker maiden’s father was a tan- 
ner, and, true daughter of a general and of the 
church, granddaughter of a bishop, Miss Felicity 
did not enjoy having to double her libations and 
incense in honor, not of her Adonis of a brother, 
but of his separatist wife, a person of “ low trad- 


104 : 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


ing origin who had enticed away his affections.” 
To double her offerings, and lose even the little 
return they had previously won, was almost too 
much to bear. 

The thirteen years of the lieutenant’s married 
life were those, therefore, in which Miss Felicity’s 
adoration was feeblest. 

In thirteen years the lieutenant succeeded in 
breaking his wife’s heart and ruining his own 
health. He returned to his sister a widower with 
one little girl, his constitution and his fortunes 
alike wrecked, having some time before been 
obliged to leave the army, partially paralyzed, with 
a child’s helplessness, and a spoiled child’s imperi- 
ousness and irritability, to be a burden for the rest 
of his life on the woman he had scarcely noticed 
while he had another to worship him. But he re- 
turned, and that to Miss Felicity was everything. 
She blotted the tanner’s daughter out of her mem- 
ory, took the tanner’s granddaughter to her heart, 
accepted her idol again, set it on its old pedestal 
with all the strength of her strong will and strong 
affections, and with a kind of melancholy pleasure 
in the certainty that if her “ Bel bowed down and 
her Nebo stooped, and were a burden to the weary 
beast,’’ no one would dispute that burden with her 
any more. 

So she toiled on and bore her burden, and 
adored it, her old, beautiful god-image, which 
u cruel circumstances,” she said to herself, “ and 
the excess of his own fascinations,” had shattered, 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


105 


and crowned the old idol with a crown woven out 
of all the loss and all the possibilities, of all it had 
been, and of all it might have been. 

Year by year she bought the finest cloth for 
his coats, and day by day she bought the best dain- 
ties for his palate, and seated him in the one easy 
chair, in the sunniest nook of the window in sum- 
mer, and the warmest corner of the fireside in 
winter ; and when he condescended to that milder 
degree of grumbling, which was his form of thanks- 
giving, she rejoiced in the character which would 
have been so lovely but for “ the selfish world and 
the ruthless circumstances which had made him 
what he was.” 

It was a provoking ritual to observe from out- 
side, especially to me, not being a worshipper of 
the lieutenant, and having a reverence little short 
of worship for the daughter, little Miss Loveday, 
who was compelled to share in the sacrificial rites. 

Of course Miss Felicity had a right to sacrifice 
herself ; but who could have had a right to take 
all individual hope and pleasure out of that gentle, 
lovely, patient woman’s life, with all her intellect- 
ual and spiritual power, and subordinate her en- 
tirely to propping up the ruins of what had never 
been better than a well-grown animal ! 

For Miss Loveday w^as the nearest approach to 
a saint I knew'; and I thank Grod I had the 
grace to know it while she was among us. It is 
among the saddest of our irrevocable losses when 
we find out, for the first time, that some of the 


106 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


noly ones of God have been beside us for us to 
consult, learn of, speak to, listen to, only when 
they have gone from us to be with the goodly 
company, who are, indeed, not far from us, but 
are just beyond speaking distance, out of reach, 
for the time, of voice and sight. 

My father helped me to the recognition. Miss 
Loveday had been a friend of my own mother’s, 
and he had the greatest reverence and love for 
her. 

He used to say the poet Cowper must have 
seen her in spirit when he wrote the lines — 

" Artist, attend, your brushes and your paint — 

Produce them ; take a chair, now draw a saint. 

Oh, sorrowful and sad ! The streaming tears 
Channel her cheeks — a Niobe appears. 

Is this a saint ? — throw tints and all away, 

True piety is cheerful as the day, — 

Will weep, indeed, and heave a pitying groan 
For others’ woes, but smiles upon her own.” 

Certainly Loveday Benbow “ smiled upon her own 
woes” with a smile so real and bright, that the 
woes and the saintliness, the burden and the 
strength which bore it, might easily have been 
hidden from a careless eye. As to the pitying 
groan for others’ woes, not only could that be re* 
lied on for any woes, from the breaking of a child’s 
doll to the breaking of a maiden’s heart, but, what 
is rarer for one whose life is passed in the shad- 
ows, she had a smile true and heart-warming as a 
sunbeam for others’ joys, from a child’s holiday to 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 107 

a maiden’s happiness in being loved, or a mother’s 
joy in loving. 

She was a little deaf, and had that sweet in- 
quiring wistfulness in her grey eyes which belongs 
often to deaf or dumb creatures, human or canine ; 
but so sweet and ready was her sympathy, and so 
wise her counsel, that she was the natural deposit- 
ory of half the love-confidences in the place ; the 
difficulty and danger of shouting such delicate ex- 
periences being nothing to the recompense in the 
quickness of her comprehension and the fulness of 
her response. 

Clever, or intellectual, were words you would 
no more have thought of applying to her than to 
an archangel ; and with her heart and brain were 
so blended, that I have sometimes wondered 
whether it was that her wit was originally keener 
than other people’s, or that it was sharpened by 
singleness of purpose ; whether it was original 
force of thought and imagination that made her 
comprehend every character quickly, or love that 
quickened thought and imagination into some- 
thing as unerring as instinct. 

My stepmother’s insight into character was 
that of a satirist or of a detective keen to scent 
out a defect. Miss Felicity’s was that of an in- 
spector of the human species, impartial, penetra- 
ting, severe but just. Miss Loveday’s insight was 
that of a physician, as keen and as just as either, 
but deeper, reaching beyond symptoms to causes, 


108 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


to the springs where the disease can be touched 
and healed. 

Sometimes, indeed, she wonld reproach herself 
with this quick penetration through disguises and 
excuses, as if it were not as necessary to the help- 
ers of humanity as to its critics to see truly. 

But it is true that the heightening of any one 
power of nature requires the heightening of every 
power to avoid deformity; the growth of every 
spiritual, as well as every intellectual gift, de- 
mands the growth of every other to preserve har- 
mony. 

The very truth of Miss Loveday’s character 
which made her perceptions so true would have 
made her a keener detective than my stepmother, 
and a severer judge than Miss Felicity, if love had 
not overwhelmed the bitter in the sweet, and 
made the justice glow into pity through a deeper 
faith and a larger hope in God and man. 

She always had something of the dove in my 
eyes, as Miss Felicity had much of the eagle, and 
in my darker moments my stepmother not a little 
of the raven. Doves need sight as keen to defend 
their blood as eagles to descry their prey. And 
Miss Loveday’s brood was all the human creatures 
that had need of her. Partly, no doubt, this dove- 
like grace that encircled her was assisted by her 
voice, w T hich, as with many deaf people, had a 
peculiar under-toned softness, like cooings under 
thick summer leaves ; and partly by her dress, 
which was chiefly replenished from her mother’s 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


109 


Quaker wardrobe, in which the prosaic drab was 
ignored, and the poetical dove-color and white 
predominated. 

Miss Loveday’s dress was what has always 
seemed to me the loveliest and most becoming 
of any to middled-aged and elderly women. It 
retained the Quaker quietness and the delicious 
Quaker freshness, without the Quaker peculiari- 
ties ; and her manner was just like her dress. She 
is fondly enveloped to my memory in a soft grey 
and white cloud of clothing, which, when I try to 
analyze it, resolves itself into the whitest of caps, 
framing her pale sweet face, the neatest of white 
muslin neckerchiefs folded over her bosom, and 
the softest of unrustling grey woollen drapery fall- 
ing in sweeping easy folds around her. Hot one 
sudden, startling, dazzling thing about her in 
dress, or manner, or voice, not the rustle of silk, 
or the glitter of a jewel; except the irrepressible 
occasional twinkle of her kind eyes, and the oc- 
casional merry ring which was like an audible 
twinkle in her soft voice and her laugh. 

She was just the opposite (I do not mean the 
contrary) of Amice Glanvil, who was all mystery 
and surprise. 

The sorrows on which Miss Loveday smiled so 
radiantly were not sentimental. From her child- 
hood she had been under the yoke unimaginable, 
unavoidable, of pain ; the yoke which in some re- 
spects presses closer on the immortal spirit, and 
cuts deeper into it than any other, and therefore 


110 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


can in some respects mould it to a more delicate 
perfection, and furrow it for larger harvests. 

Ko one in Abbot’s Weir had been able to 
fathom the cause. 

We had two doctors in Abbot’s Weir. One, 
Dr. Kenton, was of sanguine temperament, at- 
tributed all ailments to debility, and relied for 
cure chiefly on “ nature ” and port wine. 

The other, Dr. Looseleigh, was of a melancholic 
disposition, had a strong faith in the depravity of 
the human constitution, attributed ailments to ex- 
cess, and hoped for relief, as far as he hoped at all, 
from bleeding, blistering, and the lowering sys- 
tem in general. 

Both medical gentlemen had patients who re- 
covered, and patients who died. But in Abbot’s 
Weir, although theological controversy was mild 
the same could not be said of medical. Each gen- 
eration, whatever its theological proclivities, desires 
to live as long as it can ; debates on what man or 
system can enable it to live longest, are naturally 
therefore not liable to “periods of luke-warmness 
or declension.’’ 

The partisans of Mr. Kenton said that those 
patients of Mr. Looseleigh who died were killed, 
actually slain, by his remedies ; and those who 
recovered, recovered by the force of nature. 

The partisans of Dr. Looseleigh said that the 
patients of Dr. Kenton who recovered struggled 
through by miracle or the vigor of an exceptional 
constitution, and that those who died, perished 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Ill 


the victims of neglect, sheer neglect, and faithless 
contempt of means. 

Both systems had been tried on Miss Loveday, 
but neither successful. She had been blistered 
and bled in childhood by Mr. Looseleigh into all 
but atrophy. She had been “ built up ” by Dr. 
Kenton and Miss Felicity into a fever. The only 
part of either system which she declined was the 
port wine or brandy. This she resolutely refused. 
She had promised her mother never to touch 
either. Dr. Kenton therefore had the advantage 
in the controversy, in which Miss Loveday’s case 
was a standing weapon. If she could have been 
induced to break that absurd promise, port wine 
and nature might overcome Dr. Looseleigh and 
disease, and the controversy might have been 
settled forever, at least so far as facts can settle 
controversies. As to those deeper roots in the 
depth of our own consciousness, whence my father 
and other sceptical neutrals asserted both systems 
to arise, those, of course, nothing so superficial as 
facts and phenomena could have reached. 

However, from whatever cause, thus it came to 
pass that Miss Loveday’s yoke was not broken, 
and she had to suffer and conquer to the end. 

Miss Felicity nevertheless, with whom perma- 
nent neutrality was an impossible state of exist- 
ence, who found it necessary, and therefore prac- 
ticable, to make up her mind quite decidedly 
about everything, remained faithful to Dr. Kenton 
and the port-wine “ system,” influenced partly, it 


112 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


was believed, by the necessity of seeing some root 
of good in the evil tendency which had sapped 
her brother’s existence. 

It was also believed that the weekly visits 
which Dr. Kenton continued to pay had, on his 
part at least, a tenderer significance than Miss 
Felicity chose to acknowledge. There had been 
days when the genial doctor had paid Miss Felicity 
the most marked attentions ; and during the years 
when her brother’s marriage had separated her 
from the one ceaseless object of her devotion, Ab- 
bot’s Weir had believed that it detected a gradual 
softening of the tutelary Athena manner towards 
him. It was considered that the prospect of a 
pleasant home, a life without care, and an affection 
which manifested itself in the flattering form of 
respecting her judgment enough to carry on contin- 
ual controversies with her, were beginning to melt 
the impenetrable heart of Miss Felicity, and that 
she would soon consent to be an illustrious case in 
proof of the success of the building-up system. 

But her sister-in-law died, the lieutenant be- 
came a helpless invalid, and returned to receive 
once more his sister’s homage ; and from that mo- 
ment Dr. Kenton’s hopes were blighted. 

Miss Felicity returned to her old life-long role 
of priestess and amazon, adoration at her old 
shrine, and unflinching conflict with infidels and 
with circumstances for its sake. And Dr. Kenton, 
after some vain remonstrances, and some years of 
comparative estrangement, came back, partly by 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


113 


means of his medical care of Miss Loveday, to his 
old position of admiration and contention ; he 
ceased to sigh, but never ceased to think it worth 
while to put Miss Felicity right on the various 
points on which they differed ; and to the end the 
stately, brave old gentlewoman had some one who 
continued to see her with the light of youth on 
her, and to maintain that she was the finest woman 
in Abbot’s Weir, and had more brains and more 
spirit than all the men of the town put together. 

8 



CHAPTER VIII. 



T was about two years after my father’s 
second marriage that Piers and I were 
called on to rejoice in the arrival of a 
stepbrother. 

Then Mrs. Hanescombe’s heart awoke. It was 
as if her whole nature, pent up for forty years, 
burst forth in that late passion of maternal love. 

I believe she tried hard to be just to us all. I 
believe she tried hard to see what spots there 
might be in her boy’s character. But it was im- 
possible. The rest of the world she continued to 
see through the same cold, clear, cloudy, frosty 
winter daylight in which she had hitherto lived. 
Around this child glowed and palpitated ceaseless- 
ly a flood of tropical sunlight. Faults, of course, 
her Francis had, her judgment admitted he was 
human, and her views of humanity in general 
were unchanged, but with him the deepest shadows 
glowed with reflected light, like the golden shad- 
ows of some rich Venetian picture. 

The very nature of the faults he had, moreover, 
helped to dim her perceptions. He had, from 



AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


115 


childhood, no vehement, impetuous outbursts of 
indignation, like those which I was liable to ; no 
earnest, entire absorption of his whole being with 
the subject that interested him, to the forgetful- 
ness of all besides, such as characterized Piers. 
His character had an external smoothness about it 
which made the world go smoothly with him. His 
characteristic motion was gliding : so easy and 
noiseless w T as this movement that it was only now 
and then it struck you that he always contrived to 
glide into the best place, and into the possession of 
the pleasantest things to be attained. We child- 
ren, of course, who thus lost the pleasantest things 
and places, early perceived it ; but to our elders it 
was scarcely ever apparent. It was always we 
who created the final disturbance ; and what can 
any government do when there is a riot but pun- 
ish the rioters, deferring the investigation as to 
who is in the wrong to a time when the riot and 
its causes have ceased to be of moment % 

Francis was found in tranquil possession of the 
coveted delights, toy or picture-book, or place in 
the game ; possession is nine points of the law ; 
tranquillity the desideratum of all governments in 
the world ; why could we not have left our little 
brother alone ? 

Thus we were, who were continually being 
thus tranquilly robbed and wronged, the perpetual 
plaintiffs, and the world has no mercy on perpet- 
ual plaintiffs. Francis, “poor little darling,” as 
his mother truly said, “ was never heard to raise 


116 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


his sweet little voice,” while I at least was in one 
continual wail and clamor. 

Even our father often gave the verdict against 
us. “ The world was large,” he would say, “ and 
Francis was little; why did we just want the one 
thing the poor little fellow had set his heart on, 
and was so peaceably enjoying \ ” 

In vain we pleaded rights which we knew to 
be unquestionable ; what can be more tiresome, 
or seem more selfish, than to be always pleading 
one’s rights, especially against what is apparently 
the weaker party ? 

“Why were we always shrieking about our 
rights ? Brothers and sisters should not think 
about rights. They should be always ready ‘ to 
give up ’ to each other, and to do as they would be 
done by.” 

So, between my stepmother’s fondness, my 
father’s generosity, and interpretations of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount which drove me wild with the 
impossibility of combating them, and the certainty 
of their being wrong, the tyranny of our little 
brother was established. 

This was a state of things, however, that could 
not long continue unbroken. 

At length my stepmother once more proposed 
that Piers and I should be sent to Miss Felicity’s 
school. 

My father had long opposed this, having cer- 
tain theories of education, I think partly derived 


A0AINS1 THE STREAM. JJ7 

from Rousseau, not at all in harmony with Miss 
Felicity’s. 

He wished that education should be restored 
to what he considered its true meaning, of leading 
out the faculties, should be not so much’ a putting 
in as calling out, should be a development of 
growth from within, not the fitting on of an iron 
frame to contract and cramp growth from with- 
out. Theories which are now worn threadbare 
and colorless with discussion or not, were then 
fresh and full of bloom. And all such ideas Miss 
Felicity considered altogether chimerical and 
Utopian. 

“ Calling out faculties ? ” said she. “ The 
only faculty she knew that could always be sure 
of coming at the eall, was the faculty of mischief. 
Ho putting in ? What then was the good of learn- 
ing to read at all? She supposed Piers and I 
would not develop out of ourselves even the mul- 
tiplication table, unless it was put into us, still less 
the history of the Greeks and Romans, or the 
gods and heroes. Hot that she saw much use in 
history/’ she would somewhat cynically admit. 

What was there in it but wise men’s words and 
foolish men’s deeds? things which, if they had 
happened in a neighbor’s house instead of in pal- 
aces, you would have taken care the children did 
not hear. But the Greeks and Romans, and the 
gods and heroes, and the multiplication table, as 
the world was, had to be learned, and Mr. Danes- 
combe might wait some time for a new world or 


118 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


for a generation of children who came into it with 
their little minds tilled already.’’ 

My poor father had certainly seen considerable 
faculty for not getting on developed in Piers and 
me since our little brother’s arrival, and accord- 
ingly at last he waived his theory, and abandoned 
us to Miss Felicity and the rote system. To us 
the school meant simply Miss Felicity, and a very 
awful personality we considered her. My father 
was in the second stage of human progress, the age 
of philosophical system and theory ; while Miss 
Felicity had advanced to the third, contemptuously 
ignoring systems and philosophies, and recogniz- 
ing nothing but facts and phenomena ; and Piers 
and I remained in the earliest, seeing nothing but 
persons and personifications. 

From the beginning, I think, although most 
kindly disposed towards us, Miss Felicity never- 
theless regarded us as rather dangerous little per- 
sons, brought up in no one knows what heretical 
persuasions concerning the rights and the wrongs 
of man. 

The years of our school-life were among the 
most reactionary years England ever saw. 

Not an abuse but was rooted in its place, and 
not a harvest of reform but was stunted and nip- 
ped by the French Reign of Terror. 

Old Tories like Miss Felicity glorified their 
narrowest political prejudices into articles of the 
Creed, when the Revolution and his own personal 
patience had consecrated the French king into a 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


119 


martyr. Benevolent and tranquil men of progress 
like my father had to defend themselves as if they 
had been Jacobins. Mild Whigs, like Dr. Kenton, 
who looked for the general improvement of the 
world on the same sanguine and genial principles 
on which he looked for the general recovery of his 
patients, simply turned a little round the other 
way, and became for the moment mild Tories. 

“ What do you say now, Dr. Kenton, ” Miss 
Felicity would triumphantly demand, “ to your 
Deform ers and Jacobins ? ” 

* c I say, Miss Felicity,” he would reply, “what 
I always said. Above all things no convulsions, 
no violence to the constitution. If nature cannot 
throw off the ailment for herself, we must assist 
her a little, Miss Felicity, gently assist her. That 
is what I mean by reform. If our assistance fails, 
we must lot her alone and wait, Miss Felicity, 
tranquilly wait.” 

Mild Tories, on the other hand, like my uncle 
Fyford and Mr. Kabbidge, those who were Con- 
servative from fear, became rabid Tories, also from 
fear. They would have established a Deign of Ter- 
ror of the^r own on behalf of our glorious constitu- 
tion, would “ keep the mob down, sir,” said my un- 
cle to my father, “ by fire and sword, if necessary 
by the gibbet, or the — ” 

“ 17m stake” suggested my father dryly. 

My uncle scarcely heeded the interruption. 
“Are we to have, our houses burnt about our 


120 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


ears,” he said, “ by a set of fanatics calling them- 
selves philanthropists and reformers ? ” 

And it was through this tempest of prejudice 
and re-action that the noble band of religious men, 
who had set their hearts on abolishing the great 
wrong of the African slave-trade, steadfastly went 
on with the conflict, and ten times brought in the 
measure ten times defeated in a House of Com- 
mons, excited to a fury of reaction, elected by a 
nation goaded to a contempt of all progress by the 
fury and madness of the three years’ terrible reac- 
tion against centuries of oppression in France. 

It was, no doubt, this state of things, of course 
at the time unknown to us, which brought me 
into the two difficulties which now recur to my 
mind. 

One sunny Sunday afternoon Piers and I were 
sitting on the step of our arbor on the highest 
terrace of the garden. He wasplaying with Pluto, 
and I was reading intently, with my elbows on my 
knees, so intently, that I did not see my father 
and my stepmother with little Francis, my uncle 
Fyford, and Dick approaching up the steep slope, 
until they were close at hand. 

I was especially absorbed with the book because 
I ignorantly thought it was about to throw some 
light on the “ Duty to our Neighbor,” and the 
Sermon on the Mount, especially as connected 
with my stepmother and Francis, which might 
bring the Christian code within reach of my prac- 
tice, There were passages in it about “ natural 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


121 


rights,” about the “ great sin being making each 
other unhappy,” which I thought excellent ; also 
a passage asserting that “ the duty of man is not 
a wilderness of turnpike-gates between us and our 
Maker, through which we pass by ticket from one 
to the other, but plain and simple, consisting in 
our duty to God as His by birth and family , and 
in doing what we would be done by,” which I 
thought clearer than the Catechism, at least with 
my stepmother’s commentary. 

My uncle startled me by an approving pat on 
the head. 

“ Well done, little maid ! Quite a little Lady 
Jane Grey! Is it Plato, or The Whole Duty ot 
Man?” 

“It is not so much about our duties as about 
our rights ,” I said. “ I found it in the Summer 
parlor.” And I gave the volume confidingly into 
his hands. 

He started as if he had been stung, dashed it 
from him to the ground, and ground his heel into 
it as if it had been a viper. 

“ Piers Danescombe, I could not have expected 
this even of toleration like yours : Tom Paine’s 
•' Rights of man’ — such poison in the hands of this 
poor innocent babe.” 

“ Indeed, uncle Fyford,” I said, thinking that 
I had in some way compromised my father, “ it is 
a Sunday book. It is not a story book. The 
gentleman who wrote it seems to dislike the Bas- 
tile and slaverv as much as father, and war as 


122 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


much as Miss Loveday. And he speaks about, our 
Father in heaven, uncle Fyford. Indeed it is a 
Sunday book.” 

“ Listen to the poor innocent ! ” said uncle 
Fyford. “ It is enough to pierce one’s heart.” 

li Bride, my darling,” said my father, in his dry 
quiet way, “ Tom Paine’s 6 Bights of Man ’ is not 
exactly the book for you. If I had had any idea 
that your tastes lay in that direction, I would 
have labelled it, ‘ Hot good for little girls.’ But 
Bichard,” he continued, turning to my uncle, “ if 
wise men would take the good in that book and 
use it, they would do more to neutralize the harm 
in it than by railing at it in a mass forever.” 

“ Good in Tom Paine ! ” said my uncle, roused 
beyond his usual decorum. “ I am sick of your 
4 good in everything .’ I believe you would find 
good in the devil.” 

tc There might have been ! you know,” said 
my father, very gravely. His simple, quiet words 
startled me like a flash of lightning. They made 
me feel that he felt the existence of the devil to be 
a very real and sorrowful fact, instead of the half 
ridiculous, half terrible, mythical legend handed 
down to us in the nursery. 

Mrs. Danescombe intervened. 

“ That is precisely what I am always saying to 
Mr. Danescombe, Dr. Fyford,” she said. c< Good 
in everything there may be, though I confess L 
have not found it, and I believe it is not the Bible, 
but only Shakespeare that asserts it. But evil in 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


123 


everything most certainly there is, at least in every 
person. And I can never see we remove it by 
blinding our eyes to it.’’ 

“ Well, Euphrasia,’’ said my father, “you look 
for the evil and I for the good ; so, between us, I 
hope we shall strike the balance. Only, if we 
both reach the better world, you will be so unfor- 
tunate as to have lost your occupation, while mine 
can continue for ever.” 

“ Wait till you are there, Piers,” rejoined my 
uncle. “ At all events, you won’t find Tom 
Paine’s ‘Eights of Man’ there.” 

“ Mo,” replied my father, “the book will have 
done its work, good and evil, here below.” 

“ Evil enough,” said my uncle. “ Good, only 
as Satan did good to Job by landing him, with his 
potsherd, among the ashes.” 

My investigations into the “ natural rights” of 
man were, however, checked: a check the less 
painful to me because even Mr. Paine did not give 
me any light on the natural “ rights of women” or 
of little girls. I was sent back to the Ten Com- 
mandments and to the Duty to my Neighbors. 

The only result that remained from my inop- 
portune pursuit of knowledge was the rare felicity 
of a little direct religious lesson from my father. 

That evening he took me on his knee in the 
Oak parlor. Piers had gone to bed, and my step- 
mother was putting Francis to sleep, so that we 
were alone. And above us was that picture of my 
mother, present to the consciousness of us both. 


124 : 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


u Bride, my darling,” lie said, “ Duties are 
better things for us to think about than rights.” 

“ If other people would only think about rights 
a little, father,” I ventured to murmur, “ then it 
would be very nice to have nothing to think about 
but our duties. But they don’t. They only think 
about their own rights, and our duties.” 

“Very true, Bride,” he said. “They don’t, 
and they won’t. And that is the way there is so 
much troublesome history for you and me to learn. 
But you know some one must begin. Suppose 
you and I begin at the other end. Our own du- 
ties, and other people's rights. You will find 
much more good come of it in the end.” 

Then, the only time I can remember, he led 
me to my mother’s picture, and stood before it, 
with his hand on my shoulder. 

“ That was what she did, my child. God gave 
her one of his lambs to keep, and she kept it well 
as long as she was here. God help me to keep it 
for Him and for her better than I have.” “ 

“ Oh, father, you can’t keep us better,” I said. 

That lesson was brief, but it accomplished its 
end. It brought me back to my duties, instead of 
to his and to my stepmother’s. 

It was not very long after this that Piers and I 
fell into another difficulty, at Miss Felicity’s school. 

I remember this with especial distinctness, be- 
cause it was the beginning of Piers and my enter- 
ing into closer relations with Amice Glanvil and 
sweet blight Claire Angelique des Ormes. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


125 


A week before, the three spare rooms in Miss 
Felicity’s house had been engaged and occupied 
by three foreigners, refugees from France, Ma- 
dame la Marquise des Ormes, her little daughter 
Claire Angelique, and Leontine, a vivacious maid, 
who governed and protected them both, and would 
fain have governed Miss Felicity, and all Abbot’s 
Weir, had this been possible to any Frenchwoman. 

Madame had only been seen, a slight fragile 
lady, leaning rather feebly on the arm of Leon- 
tine, and greeting Miss Felicity as she entered 
the arched door with such a courtly . reverence as 
Abbot’s Weir had not previously dreamed of. 

Leontine had been seen and heard abundantly, 
making her presence felt like a wind through 
house and town. Little Claire had only been 
heard prattling in a sweet voice to her mother in 
the parlor inside the schoolroom until that momen- 
tous afternoon when she appeared under Miss Fe- 
licity’s wing, but not under her rod, as a kind of 
amateur scholar. 

It was an August afternoon, very sultry. The 
room was long and low ; Miss Felicity was fettered 
by no government regulations as to cubic feet of 
air and space. Of space there was enough ; of air 
certainly not enough to keep forty children awake. 
Miss Felicity would on no account have exposed 
her lessons to the intrusion of the street by open- 
ing the window. 

Want of ozone, therefore, was telling power- 
fully on the intellects of the pupils, and on the 


126 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


temper of the mistress. The flies were drowsily 
buzzing now and then against the panes, the black 
cat sleepily purring on the window-seat, too lazy 
even to wink at my stepmother’s cat on the oppo- 
site window. Many of the children out of reach 
of the rod had yielded to sleep, and the rest were 
hopelessly struggling against it, when the question 
came in a sharp voice from Miss Felicity — 

“ Bridget Danescombe, who were the heroes ? ” 
I must have been half asleep myself, for I re- 
member instantly sitting up trying to look especi- 
ally wide awake, as is the wont of persons so sur- 
prised, and responding desperately to the last 
word which I had caught. 

“ Father says there are some in France, Miss 
Felicity. He said so last night. They pulled 
down a wicked place called the Bastile.” 

Miss Felicity’s color rose. I think she did not 
know whether I said it in simplicity or in malice. 

“ Bridget Danescombe,” she repeated, slightly 
rapping my fingers to recall my attention, “ think 
what you are saying. "Who were the heroes ? ” 

“ And some, father said, there are in England,” 
I continued, divided between anxiety to sustain 
myself by that infallible judgment, and dread of 
the well-known little ebony ruler. “ They want to 
pull down the slave-trade and the impressment — 
he said impressment. These are our Bastiles. I 
know he said they were heroes. And the only 
•name I remember is Granville Sharpe.” 

“ Silly child, dreaming as usual,” said Miss Fe- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


127 


licity, diplomatically passing by the perilous 
answer, and admonishing me by a severe rap on 
my knuckles. “ I pass to your brother — two 
years your younger and ten years your better. 
Piers Danescombe, who were the heroes ? ” 

Whatever could have been thought of the spir- 
it of my answer, there could have been no doubt 
as to that which rang through the tones of Piers. 
Ilis was a response, not to Miss Felicity’s question, 
but to her rap on my fingers. 

“ Sister Bride is right, Miss Felicity,” he said. 
“ Father did say so, only last night.” 

By this time the little community was thor- 
oughly aroused, with true British instinct scenting 
the battle from afar. 

“Yes, indeed, Miss Felicity,” I ventured, 
“ father said impressing seamen and trading in 
slaves was as bad as shutting people up in the Bas- 
tile, and Mr. Granville Sharpe was a hero for try- 
ing to stop it. I remember quite well that was 
the hero’s name, and also that he wants to stop 
people having slaves, because that is wicked.” 

I had rushed on impetuously, forgetful of all 
but the purpose in hand, when, looking up, I saw 
Amice Glanvil’s great mysterious eyes fixed fully 
on me, not in anger, but with a look of grave won- 
der and questioning. 

She looked a shade more pallid than usual, but 
I flushed crimson. I remembered the black nurse 
and the negro footmen, and I felt so sorry I should 
have said anything to grieve my princess. 


128 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


But I had not much time for reflection. For 
then out and spoke Dick Fyford. 

“ Miss Felicity, if Bride Danescombe were not 
a girl, so that no one can do anything to her, she 
would not dare. My own uncle is a sea captain, 
and I am going to sea, and he says people who 
cry out against impressment are traitors and fools. 
I heard him. The king’s navy could not be kept 
up without, and then the French would come and 
kill the king and burn up London, and Abbot’s 
Weir, and all of us.” 

The conflict was becoming perilous. Was 
Miss Felicity’s class of mythology — extra — to 
prepare the more aristocratic classes for Mr. Bab- 
bidge, and to distinguish them from the common 
herd, to end in this ? 

Had not Mrs. Babbidge, always a little too 
eagerly alive to the growth of Miss Felicity’s 
pupils into her husband’s, denounced the mythol- 
ogy as a poaching on his demesnes? And had 
not Mr. Babbidge himself mildly admitted that 
Miss Felicity was meddling with matters too high 
for her ? 

And was it to be said that such frightful Jacob- 
inism had been uttered in her presence unavenged ? 

The case was perplexing. On the score of 
politics it could not be taken up. Piers and I 
had appealed to Caesar in the person of our father, 
and to Miss Felicity paternal authority was a 
foundation of all other authority, by no means to 
be lightly interfered with. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


129 


She therefore recurred to history, and wisely 
chose to treat me as a dunce rather than as a here- 
tic. 

“Bridget Danescombe knows better,” she 
asserted. “ The heroes lived in Greece. They 
come after the heathen gods. There were Her- 
cules and Perseus, — and others,” said Miss Felici- 
ty, not having a book, and judiciously becoming 
vague. They fought with dragons. And the 
heroes and the dragons have all been dead and 
gone thousands of years. Bridget Danescombe, I 
am sorry ; but I must put the fool’s-cap on you, 
and you must sit on that stool in the middle of 
the school. Take this book and learn the names 
of the heroes. When you have learned them you 
may come down.” 

And so saying, she took off my little mob-cap, 
put on the terrible cone of brown paper, and made 
me climb on a tall stool. Thus were the germs of 
Jacobinism crushed ; and thus was I set up as a 
beacon to juvenile Abbot’s Weir. Piers came 
and stood beside me, his eyes flashing and his face 
crimson, in defiance of authority. Wisely, Miss 
Felicity took no notice. Her government was too 
strong for her to delight in petty, irritating re- 
venges. 

I was too proud to cry, and too bewildered by 
anger and shame to learn. And yet by some 
strange instinct of justice I made a distinction 
between my stepmother and Miss Felicity. 

My stepmother had never rapped my knuck- 
9 


130 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


les, or set me on a stool, or punished me in any 
way ; and yet her cold “ Bridget ! ” hurt me more 
than Miss Felicity’s ruler, or even her fool’s-cap, 
terrible as that was. 

I felt that Miss Felicity, in some unaccount- 
able way, had misunderstood my words. I did 
not feel that she misunderstood and misjudged 
me. And, after a little while, getting used 
to my position, I found myself endeavoring 
to account, not for my conduct (in this instance 1 
had the great and unusual happiness of a clear 
conscience), but for Miss Felicity’s, and to justify 
her. 

This, of course, did not help me to learn my 
“heroes,” but it quieted my mind, and the book 
served as a veil as I held it before my face. 

And so the minutes passed on, until the bell 
rang for the school to close. 

We always finished in the morning with the 
grace before meals, and in the evening with a 
verse of evening prayer. 

For this purpose Miss Felicity told me to 
come down from my elevation. 

To this instant my heart beats faster as I think 
how that sweet little French girl. Claire, not of 
course being in the awe of our punishments and 
rules of ordinary scholars, glided forward to me 
before any one could stop her, with her easy 
French grace, and helped me down, and kissed 
my cheek, her first kiss, with the fool’s-cap still 
on, and led me to Miss Felicity, and asked her in 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


131 


sweet broken English to take the cap off, which 
Miss Felicity very kindly and rather nervously 
did. And then Claire herself, with her lissome 
fingers, arranged my hair under my little cap, and 
kissed my quivering lips, for I was bursting into 
tears. Then, apparently summoned from the 
room within, she waved her hand to all of us and 
courtesied like a fairy queen, and disappeared 
within the door of her mother’s apartment. 

Piers and I, of course, w T ere kept in that day, 
until I had learned the mythology. And mean- 
time Miss Felicity went out and left us alone, with 
Amice Glanvil, who was kneeling on the window- 
seat, waiting for the negro nurse. 

When Miss Felicity was gone, Amice came 
down noiselessly from the window-seat, and sud- 
denly stood before me. 

I looked up from the book, and met those dark 
wistful eyes for the first time, not turned away 
from me, but gazing steadily into mine, through 
my eyes, I felt, into me. 

“ Who said it was wicked to have slaves f ” she 
asked. 

My eyes sank before her gaze. 

“ It was my father,” I said in a low voice. I 
wished to say something in excuse, but I could find 
nothing. 

“ But people need not be wicked who have 
slaves,” she said. “ My father was good, and he 
had slaves. And he is dead. He was not wicked. 


132 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


And I was born with slaves. How can we help 
what we are born with ? ” 

She spoke very low, with a deep voice and a 
clear lingering utterance, which to me sounded 
foreign. The question was beyond me. 

“ You can be kind to them,” I said, feebly. 
That was all I could think of. 

“ Some old Greek people set them free ! ” said 
Piers, thoughtfully, more childlike than I ; “ that is 
what my father said Mr. Granville Sharpe wanted. 
You can set them free ,” he said, with a boy’s di- 
rectness, “ that is the only way, I think, of being 
kind to slaves.” 

Amice Glanvil turned her penetrating glance 
on him, as if to look him through ; but his frank, 
blue eyes met hers with a steady gaze, and bore 
the scrutiny. 

“ Set them free ! Piers Danescombe,” she 
said. “ You do not know in the least what you 
are talking about. But you have given me the 
answer at the very bottom of your thoughts, and I 
thank you.” For she was not in the least like a 
child, our princess. 

The negro nurse came to fetch her, and inter- 
rupted our conversation. 

But when she was wrapped up in her gold and 
crimson splendors, she turned back to us and took 
one of our hands in each of hers. 

“ Bride Danescombe,” she said, “ I like you. I 
have known and liked you a long time, and I like 
you better to-day. Piers Danescombe, you are a 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


133 


little boy, and do not know in the least what you 
said. But you speak the truth, and hardly any 
one does. And I like you too. I will ask Granny. 
And you will come and see me. Good-bye.” 

I felt honored as by a royal invitation ; but 
Piers was cooler, and said, “ ¥e will see.” 

I got upon the window-seat and looked after 
Miss Amice in a flutter of delight. I forgot all 
about the heroes. I felt sure I had found my 
heroine. The spell of silent years was broken ; our 
princess had spoken to us, and the enchanted pal- 
ace would be sure to open. 

Then a soft voice called me from the corner 
where little Miss Loveday had been lying on her 
couch, correcting exercises, unobserved by any of 
us. 

“ Dear child,” she said, ct dear little Bride, let 
me help thee. Aunt Felicity will come back, and 
thou wilt have learned nothing.” 

In a few minutes she had taught me the les- 
son. 

And when Miss Felicity returned, I said it to 
her perfectly. 

I think she was anxious to make some amends 
to me. I had suffered as a victim to great public 
considerations, as I did not know, but she did. 
But I felt there was no personal wrong intended, 
and I felt no resentment against her. And when 
she took my hand kindly, and said I had a good 
father and mother, and she hoped I would be a 
good little girl, I took courage, and looking up in 


134 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


her face said, “ Miss Felicity, father said you were 
one of the heroes, too.” 

“ Nonsense ! nonsense, child ! ” she said, color- 
ing. But I saw that the keen eyes moistened, and 
she took me to Miss Loveday and said, in a trem- 
ulous voice — 

“ Loveday, the child grows more like her poor 
dear mother every day — I saw it on that stool to- 
day — and she has just that sweet, forgiving temper. 
And, please God, the poor little maid shall never 
stand there again. It was a mistake of mine, and 
it cut me to the heart. There,” she added, laugh- 
ing, “ there’s a foolish thing for a mistress to say 
to a child. • Foolish old woman and foolish little 
Bride. How shall I keep you in order now ? You 
will never be afraid of the ruler and the fool’s-cap 
more.” 

But I began to love Miss Felicity. And oh, 
the good it did me to hear a grown-up woman 
actually confess she had made a mistake and done 
wrong ! 

It restored to me my ideal of justice. It made 
me feel there was one right way for little children 
and grown people. 

From that day I would not have offended or 
grieved Miss Felicity for the world'. 

But when she left the room Miss Loveday put 
her arm around me and said — 

“ Little Bride, it is quite right to learn about 
the old heroes. All little boys and girls must. 
But never thou give up believing in the heroes 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


135 


and saints now . That is the great matter for us. 
Never give up looking for them, little Bride, and 
always expecting to see them. It is a pity not to 
know the heroes of long ago. But the most ter- 
rible mistake we can make, any of us, is not to 
learn to know the heroes and saints God is making 
to-day, who are with us now, because that is like 
misunderstanding God himself, and our dear Lord 
and Saviour, and putting Him far back into his- 
tory, among the Greeks and Homans. 

“ Never think the saints and heroes are all 
dead and gone, Piers and Bride. It is like think- 
ing our Lord is dead, and his living Spirit with 
us no more. That is the mistake people who went 
wrong, made in every age. Look for them, expect 
to find them in the world — in your little world — 
now, and look to God, who is always making them, 
and you will find them. And then stick close to 
them, my dears, and follow them, whatever they 
are called and whatever they look like ; and, in 
that way, you may grow like them too. Oh, thank 
God, Bride,” she added in a low voice, “ I did ask 
God long ago for this ; and He heard me, and 
showed me your mother. He showed her to me 
before she went away. And that has helped me 
all my life. Never, never think the saints and 
heroes are living no longer upon earth. The he- 
roes are not dead, nor the dragons ; nor are the 
saints gone to heaven, or their crosses. Look up 
and keep your heart open and upward, and you 


136 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


will find them — find them all, my poor little ones, 
never fear.” 

I tried to say something to her, but I could 
not. My voice would not come. 

For, when father had said Miss Felicity was a 
hero, he had said also that Miss Loveday was a 
saint. 

But I smiled all through my heart as I went 
across to the market-place, to think how much 
sooner than Miss Loveday had expected her words 
had begun to come true. 




CHAPTER IX. 

HERE are many mornings in our lives, 
many moments which are as fountains, 
from which the rest of life continues to 
flow. 

The old promise has been kept. Day and 
night, winter and summer, seed-time and harvest, 
have not failed. 

And hereafter, also, (I trust) it will be thus. It 
is in a pagan Elysium, not in a Christian Paradise, 
that “ everlasting spring ” abides. 

What are blossoms that never ripen into fruit 
but painted shows ? What is childhood which 
never awakens into manhood but a dwarfed or un- 
developed humanity ? What are seed-times which 
have no harvest but promises perpetually renewed 
and never fulfilled ? 

“ No night there 99 must mean no darkness, no 
bewilderment, no losing our way, no missing our 
end, no horror of doubt, no shadow of death ; cer- 
tainly not, no fresh mornings. So often we con- 
fuse divine suggestions by vulgarizing symbols in- 



138 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


to pictures, or by hammering out poetical images 
into prosaic parables ! 

Again and again in our lives “ God takes us 
by the hand,” as the old Moravian hymn sings, 
“ and says, start afresh.” 

Here, indeed, our fresh startings are made ne- 
cessary, too often, by our wanderings from the 
way, or our weariness of the way. But the ful- 
ness of life there will surely not be less rich in va- 
riety and glorious growth than the hindered and 
fluctuating and failing life here. For ever it will 
be walking in “ newness of life.” O wondrous ful- 
ness of joy, when all the past shall enrich, not bur- 
den and sadden, the present; when before the 
heart, satisfied with the present in His presence, 
shall spread endless ranges of hope in the unveiled 
future, also in His presence ! 

¥e shall not be gods hereafter, but children of 
God ; and, forever, in our Father’s hand, will be 
infinite possibilities of growth unforeseen by us, 
and divine surprises of bliss. 

One such morning, or fountain head, in my life 
was that memorable afternoon when Miss Felicity 
exalted me to the stool of repentance and crowned 
me with the fool’s-cap, and afterwards exalted her- 
self and human nature in my sight by confessing 
herself in the wrong, and crowned me with the 
kiss of reconciliation, which sealed me her loyal 
subject thereafter. 

For then and there three great friendships of 
my life began : that dear discipleship to Loveday 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


139 


Benbow — that tender affection to Claire des Ormes, 
half motherly, half lover-like — that faithful “ cam- 
eraderie” with Amice Glanvil in many a pull 
“ against the stream.” 

Before that day, in looking back, it seems as 
if life had still been cradled in the mountain tarn, 
mirroring the little world around, filling its own 
little cup. After that it began to flow. 

And not mine, but my brother’s also, which 
was in many ways more than my own to me. 
Our lives began to flow; and they began to part, 
into those two streams of womanhood and man- 
hood which are each one so much more for being 
two, — so much more to each other, so much more 
to the world. 

In the first place, it was just after that morn- 
ing that for the first time I remember Piers took 
an opposite course to me. 

When, in due time, the invitation came for us 
from Madam Glanvil to spend a holiday with 
Amice at Court, he would not go. 

He was not quite ten, and I was not quite 
thirteen. I had in my small way been “ a mother 
to him” for so many years. His refusal surprised 
me greatly. 

My father did not seem displeased at Piers de- 
clining ; indeed, he appeared to wonder a little at 
my delight in accepting. 

Mrs. Danescombe, on the contrary, commended 
me. She said it was a very desirable house to 


140 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


visit at, and she was pleased to see me appreci- 
ate it. 

“ It is a big house certainly, Bride,” said my 
father ; “ but you know we do not grow bigger by 
being in big houses.” 

“ Mr. Danescombe,” remonstrated my step- 
mother, “ let me entreat you not to teach Jacobin- 
ism to Bride : for girls at least it cannot be suit- 
able.” 

“ It is not the house, father,” I said ; “ it is 
Amice.” 

“ Amice, with the glory of the big house about 
her,” he said, “ and the black servants, and the 
sedan-chair. How long have yon known Miss 
Glanvil ? ” 

“ Oh, father,” I said, “ all our lives long.” 

“ A very extensive period,” he said. “ I did 
not know you had ever spoken to each other.” 

<c Ho, not exactly spoken until yesterday,” I 
said, “ but looked , and understood each other al- 
ways.” 

He laughed and said no more. 

But in the evening I endeavored to shake 
Piers’s resolution. 

We were sitting in that very miscellaneous 
lumber-room, music-room, and workshop of my 
father’s, called the Summer parlor. 

I was planning Armadas, and talking of great 
naval campaigns. (We were just at the outbreak 
of the first war with the French Republic.) Piers 
was constructing a little ship ; a division of labor 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


141 


frequent between us. He was essentially a maker, 
not a critic, except as far as criticism is necessary 
to construction. While I was content with any- 
thing that would float, his quick eye caught the 
angles and curves which made the difference be- 
tween swift and slow sailing. He was never sat- 
isfied until the little vessel was as perfect as his 
accurate hands could make it. I believe from 
early years he had an opinion that the talking of 
the world is mostly to be done by women, and by 
men who cannot, or will not, work. 

“You will not go to Court, Piers,” I said. 
“It never can be because Amice called you a ‘lit- 
tle boy?’” 

He laughed. 

“ How like a girl, sister ! ” he said (not satiri- 
cally ; I never heard him say a satirical thing in 
his life, his nature was too downright and too 
sweet). Later in life I know he thought satire 
only the poor refuge of people who could not 
fight the battles — “ not like you ! Wliat differ- 
ence can calling me anything make ? Besides, 
I am a little boy, rather ; and I like Amice Glan- 
vil. She is almost as good as a boy herself.” 

Feminine and masculine distinctions were be- 
coming very pronounced. My protectorate was 
evidently tottering ; and also I felt a little jealous. 

“ I don’t believe boys like girls better for being 
like boys,” I said ; “ at least only quite little boys 
do. Claire des Orrnes is not like a boy, at all 
events ; and I am sure you like her.” 


142 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


“ She is not like a boy or a girl, or anything,” 
he replied. 

“ Less ? ” I said. 

“No, you know very well, sister,” he said, 
“ more ! ” 

“ Yes, I think so,” I said. “ When she kissed 
me, it felt as if it had been the queen. What is 
she like? A fairy? or a princess ? or an an^el? or 
a hero?” 

“How can we tell, sister? We never saw 
either. Only it would be worth while to do some- 
thing for her, like what she did for you.” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ it would. But there is noth- 
ing to do.” 

“Something always comes to do,” he said, 
“ when we are ready.” 

It was a cheerful view of life, and more ax- 
iomatic than Piers knew. 

We had wandered from Amice and Court. 

“And you will not go to Court? Not if 
father wishes it ? ” 

“Father does not care,” he said. 

Which I knew was true. 

“ Not to see Amice ? who is nearly as good as 
a boy, and all those wonderful monkeys, and par- 
rots, and models, and museums ? ” 

“ I can see Amice at school,” he said. 

“ Oh, Piers, why won’t you ? Not with me ? ” 

“ Sister Bride, I ccmnot ,” he said. “ I cannot 
be waited on by slaves.” 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


143 


We had heard so many stories of the wrongs 
and cruel hardships of slavery ! 

I had cried over them so many times; and 
planned so many wonderful schemes of rescue; 
and had sometimes thought Piers rather luke- 
warm on the subject. 

And meantime, the griefs which had melted 
into tearful dewdrops with me, had been entering 
into his very heart. 

I could say no more. , 

So I went alone to Court. 

It was more awful than I expected. I was 
met at the door by the two black footmen, and 
ushered with bows through the hall, museum, and 
dining-room, into the large withdrawing-room. 

Ho one was there; and alone in those great 
stately rooms, among the ancestral portraits and 
the ancestral chairs, and the Japanese cabinets : 
alone, without Piers to matronize, .1 felt a very 
little girl indeed. And that uncomfortable con- 
sciousness of clothes not quite duly identified with 
me, which through my stepmother’s monitions 
had become the spectre of my darker moments, 
came on me irrepressibly. 

Only until Amice came in, and by her pres- 
ence filled the grand old rooms with life, not rush- 
ing or gushing, by any means, but with that 
essential reality and absence of self-consciousness 
about her which always made everything of the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


144 

nature of clothes and conventionalities sink into 
their due subordination. 

That, I suppose, was partly what Piers meant 
by her being like a boy. 

She came forward and took my hand. 

“Where is Piers,” she said, “your little 
brother ? ” 

My eyes fell. 

“He could not — did not — come,” I said, in 
some confusion. 

“ Would not,” she said, decidedly. “ He is a 
strange little boy, but I like him.” 

She seemed to me rather candid about my 
kindred. 

“ He is the dearest brother in the world,” I 
said. 

“Ho doubt,” she said, “ to you. He is your 
own. You are not in the least alike. But I like 
you .” 

She never asked if we liked her. 

“ You have another brother who is not like 
either of you,” she said, “ very little. I do not 
like him. He looks as if he had been born old.” 

That was unfortunate, for my stepmother, I 
knew, looked on my friendship at Court as an 
inf - oduction for Francis. 

I began to think her confidences as to the fam- 
i \f had better stop. 

But she continued. 

“ I like your father ; he is a gentleman, al- 
though he does think it wicked to have slaves. I 


AGAINST THE STKEAM. 


145 


am glad your mother is only your stepmother. 
She is like your little brother. And I always 
want her to be well tossed about in a wind. A 
storm at sea would be best. That shakes one out 
of many things.” 

It was very curious to find we had all been 
looked at and through so long, by those wistful, 
inquiring eyes. 

And here was a new and most interesting 
glimpse into her former life ! 

“ You have been in a storm at sea ! That must 
be wonderful,” I said, not sorry to reverse the 
telescope and turn it on her own life. 

“Yes. I liked it,” she said ; “ especially when 
it was dangerous.” 

She had her hat in her hand ; she put it on 
and led me into the garden. 

“ The waves were very high ? ” I asked. 

“ It was not the waves I liked,” she replied, 
“ it was the people. It was as good as the play, 
indeed, it was much better, because it was the 
other way. Every one changed characters — * 
changed into themselves. It was great fun. Peo- 
ple who had told wonderful stories of their kill- 
ing lions and tigers, and frightening slaves, turned 
quite white, and wrung their hands, and kept 
questioning the captain, like women, if there was 
any danger ? And one man, who had laughed at 
the Methodists, and had sworn big oaths, actually 
came and asked my poor Chloe to pray for him. 
It was 'Capital fun.” 

lb 


146 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


I began to think her rather elfish and hard- 
hearted — “ cyn ical ” 1 should have said had I 
known the word. 

“ Chloe is a Methodist,” I replied, rather eva- 
sively. I know a Methodist, too, old Reuben Pen- 
gelly.” 

“ Yes,” she said ; “ the old man with the vio- 
loncello, in a scarlet waistcoat. Chloe loves him 
like a brother. And Chloe heard from him about 
you. He loves you all so much. Only Granny 
won’t let her go often to the meetings. She says 
it gives those poor creatures notions.” 

“ What notions ? ” I said, rising out of my life- 
long awe of Amice with some indignation. “Ho 
one would get anything but good notions from 
Reuben.” 

“ Good notions for white people, very likely,” 
she replied ; “ but white people and black are not 
the same. At least, so Granny says. I am not 
sure ; however, it makes very little difference to 
Chloe. For she has her notions, wherever she is, 
and they make her very happy.” 

“ What notions make her happy ? ” I asked. 

“ That God is very good, and loves every one, 
black and white. That He can make black people 
have white hearts,” she replied softly. “ It makes 
her very happy. But I cannot quite see it. At 
least if I were black I should find it difficult to 
think God had cared much, or taken much trouble 
about me.” 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 147 

“ I did not see it once,” I said, “ till Eeuben 
showed me.” 

“ Did not see what f ” she said, looking full 
into my eyes. 

“ That God was good to me” I said. 

“ To you ! ” she replied, rather scornfully. 
“ Then you must certainly have been very cross 
and ungrateful. 1 can see that plainly enough. 
You have a father and a brother ! ” 

“ He had taken away Mother ! ” I said. It 
nearly choked me to say it, but I felt I must. 
“ And I was ungrateful, and did not understand 
Him. But I do now ! ” 

She smiled a little peculiar smile of her own, 
sarcastic but not severe. 

“ Understand God /’” she said, with a strange 
depth in her tone. “ That is a good deal for a 
little girl. You are a year younger than I am. 
Eeuben told Chloe.” 

“Understand that He is my Father, and is 
good, always,” I said, “ to every one.” 

“That is a good deal too! ” she said ; “more 
than I do. But Chloe does. She says our Sav- 
iour let a black man carry his cross. I am not 
quite sure of that. Because, they were not all 
black then in Africa, the history says. That is the 
worst of history. It disturbs so many nice notions. 
But Chloe knows nothing of history, at least only 
that one History. And it comforts her to think of 
that black man carrying the cross. Why, I can’t 
exactly see, even if it is true. ” 


148 AGAINST TEE STREAM. 

“ Ah, Amice, I can see ! ” I said. “ Wouldn’t 
you have liked to carry it for Him ? ” 

She paused a moment, and then said, very 
slowly and gravely, 

“ If He had given it to me. But He did not. 
It was only the Romans.” 

“ It is almost always the Romans or the J ews 
who do lay things like that on people,” I said. 
“ But it was His cross. Ah, I do think I should 
have liked that ! To have helped Him a little ! ” 

“ I think you would,” she said, with a sort of 
tenderness that had not been in her voice before. 
“ I would rather have beaten off the Jewi und the 
soldiers.” 

“ I should not like to have been the Romans ! ” 
she added, very low and sadly. u Do you think 
any one can be like that now ? ” she asked, with 
one of her sudden, inquiring looks, as if she would 
surprise an answer out of one’s eyes. 

The whole meaning flashed on me, and I was 
dumb. 

“ Because,” she said, “ if that history is always 
going on, you see, as Chloe seems to think, there 
must always be the two sides, and one would like 
to be sure on which side one is.” 

“ Do you care for flowers ? ” she resumed, 
changing her tone and subject suddenly. “ I 
don’t ; unless they are wild. Furze and heather 
on the down, when one is galloping over it, are 
nice. But in beds they are tiresome. And espe- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


149 


daily in green-houses — mere things in pots. It is 
dreadful to have to grow up. When I am seven- 
teen I shall have to show Granny’s visitors round 
the green-houses, and listen to them saying how 
gorgeous this flower is, and how lovely that leaf is, 
on and on for ever. Animals are what I like. 
They are so queer, and yet so fond of one. And 
one can so easily make them happy. And they 
have no souls, which is a great comfort, when crea- 
tures belong to one ; it saves one from so much 
perplexity. At least no souls that can he lost ; no 
conscience ; that is the troublesome thing. Are 
you sure they have not souls of some kind ? Dogs 
now, and some horses, look as if they had some 
kind of souls growing in them, something begin- 
ning to be a soul. Don’t you think so ? ” 

I had never speculated on the psychology of 
animals. My chief personal attachments had been 
among cats, except, indeed, Pluto. 

“I certainly never thought my stepmother’s 
cat had a soul,” I said. “ If it has, it must he 
such a very bad one, I am sure I hope it hasn’t. 
And I am sure it has no conscience. Nor my 
own kittens. They purr and rub against one, 
and are so soft and comfortable that I never 
thought of their wanting anything more.” 

“Cats? Certainly not!” she replied, decid- 
edly. “ I always think one could have made a 
cat oneself almost. All fur and purr, and want- 
ing to be stroked. That is, some cats. There are 
others, like tigers, all cunning, and stealth, and 


150 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


spite, one could not have made, would not if one 
could. Ah, Bride ! (may I call you Bride ? It is 
so much more like you than Bridget) how many 
puzzles there are ! Does it not seem as if the 
devil must have created some things ? ” 

“ The devil create anything ! ” I said indig- 
nantly. “ Ho ! God — the good God — created 
everything, and created everything good.” 

“ It is not all very good just now,” she said, 
shaking her head. u At all events, the devil has 
spoiled a great deal.” 

All this was said at intervals, as she was show- 
ing me round the place, garden, rabbit-hutches, 
pheasantry, poultry-yard, her own horse in the 
stables, where the great bloodhound fawned on 
her, and the large staghound put his paws on her 
shoulders in a rapture of welcome. 

“ There ! ” she said, “ down, Leo ! poor fellow ! 
Dogs one certainly could never have made.” 

“ Some creatures love me, Bride, you see,” she 
added. “ I am not sure that you do. You think 
me too like a boy. You see, I was the only child, 
there was no son, only a daughter, and I have to 
do for both.” 

She did care, then, to be loved. So daring and 
apparently independent, yet so sensitive to every 
change of feeling in those she cared about— she, 
too, had need of love, as much as I had. 

For I had been feeling just a little doubtful 
about her ; and she knew it as well as if I had said 


AGAINST TEE STREAM 


151 


all I felt, in plainer words than I could have 
found. 

We came to the kitchen garden. 

“ I like this,” she said. “ The vegetables have 
something to do. They are not like the flowers, 
fine ladies living to be looked at. Especially ger- 
aniums and dahlias, and camellias. They are as if 
they were stiffening into wax- work. Some of the 
flowers are just sweet and lovely because they can- 
not help it ; and so natural and full of life, no 
gardeners can spoil them. Hoses, lilies of the 
valley, the great white queen-lily, and violets. 
But vegetables, poor things, are always doing their 
best in an honest and simple way, and not think- 
ing about themselves. And the flowers in kitchen 
gardens are always the nicest, don’t you think ? I 
suppose the company of the useful humble crea- 
tures improves them.” 

Then she led me silently to a mouldy little ar- 
bor in an angle of the wall. 

“ Don’t you hate arbors? ” she said. “ They 
are the most ridiculous things. They are neither 
open air nor indoors. And I hate all things and 
people that are neither one thing nor another. 
There is Clapham, for instance ; stuck-up houses 
and bits of gardens always trying to look like 
'country. How I should hate to live there; al- 
though your hero, Mr. Granville Sharpe, does live 
there, and other people who are something like 
him!” 

How much she had seen ! Clapham, I knew, 


152 


AGAINST THE STREAM . 


was near London. My father had a first cousin 
there, to whom one day we were to pay a visit. 

“ What is it in you, Bride Danescombe, that 
makes me like you, and say everything I ought 
and I ought not out to you ? You don’t say much. 
And I am sure you don’t always like what I say. 
But you know it is quite useless for me to seem 
somebody else, and then wake up and find it was 
not me.” 

I wanted to say how much I liked her. But I 
could say nothing. 

“Now,” she said, with a little monosyllabic 
laugh. (She never laughed in peals, only with her 
lips and eyes, and that one little quiet musical 
dropping of laughter.) “ I will show you my like- 
ness. I have kept it for you since the day you 
called Granville Sharpe a hero.” 

And from a corner of the seat she took a little 
crocus-bulb. It had a curious long appendage to 
it like an ivory knitting-needle. “ I found it, 
lying forgotten and forlorn, in a piece of turned- 
up ground,” she said. “ It could not get anything 
to root itself in, in any natural, proper way, like 
other crocuses and so it shot down tiiis ugly 
thing, feeling and feeling for something to twist 
its roots about. And at last it found something A 

“ Oh, Amice, Amice,” I said, feeling those 
motherly wings fluttering all warm in my heart 
once more. “ You mean you found me f Me ! ” 

And I knelt down and put my arms all around 
her, and hid my head in her lap, and began to cry. 


AGAINST TEE STREAM^ 153 

“ I do love you. We have liked you so long, 
Piers and I. But oh, indeed, you want more than 
me. What am I ? ” 

“ You are a good, dear little soul,” she said ; 
“ as kind as old Leo or poor Chloe. And with a 
kind of soul and conscience which makes you, on 
the whole, better than Leo, especially as I have 
nothing to do with it.” 

And she gave me such a long kiss, and such a 
long, close hug — her whole heart seemed to come 
into mine. 

“ There ! what would Granny say ? She 
would call it a 6 scene.’ And Mrs. Danescombe ? 
All your pretty feathers ruffled as if you had been 
in a south-wester. Come in and preen yourself, 
and Chloe shall help you.” 

Then again, with that quick sympathetic inter- 
pretation — “ Not Chloe? Well, then, / will. 
But you may tell your little brother, Chloe is 
not a slave. There are no slaves in England now. 
Your Mr. Granville Sharpe got that settled years 
ago, as you might have known, if he is such a hero, 
and you such lovers of blacks.” 

On our way in we met Madam Glanvil, as she 
was usually called in Abbot’s Weir. 

I had never seen her before, except at churchy 
or in state in her coach. And now she was in her 
ordinary attire, a plain, closely-fitting woollen dress 
(woven in the cottage-looms of Abbot’s Weir) ? 
rather short, with a hood, all grey — not Miss Love- 


154 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


day’s grey, dove-like, but hard, prosaic, black-and- 
white grey. 

A very fine, erect, manly old lady, pacing 
through her fields and gardens in stout leather 
boots, with her steward. 

“ Granny is like me,” said Amice. “ Since my 
grandfather died, she has to do for both.” 

Described in color, her whole effect was steel- 
grey, as Loveday Benbow’s was dove-color. Her 
eyes were steel-grey, with clear, steely gleams, and 
also stormy, thunderous flashes. 

She looked me all over, not, however, in a way 
which made me conscious of clothes. Then she 
nodded, rather approvingly, and then she said — 

“ Go in and get ready for dinner. You have 
seven minutes. Do you think I can wait for chil- 
dren % ” 

“ She says whatever she likes, and no one can an- 
swer her,” said Amice. “ She is deaf, you know — 
so deaf that she never hears anything but what 
she likes, so that it is quite useless to be angry or 
to defend one’s self. But she likes you, I see from 
her nod. Granny’s nod is like J upiter’s, you know, 
in the Homer ; so don’t be afraid.” 

The dinner was silent. And again, the weight 
of the big rooms, and the black footman stepping 
as softly as my stepmother’s cat, and the plate, 
and the Nankin china, like our very best, which 
was never used — were a little oppressive to me. 

After dinner Madam Glanvil settled herself to 
her nap in a great chair by the window, and told 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


155 


us to go and amuse ourselves. But oexore she 
spread the Bandana silk handkerchief over her 
face, to keep off the flies (of which she spoke in 
language so strong it sounded to me rather like 
swearing), she called me to her. 

“ Stand there in the light, Bridget Danes- 
combe,” she said, “ and let me look at you.” 

There was something in her direct, imperious 
way which rather amused me; and not feeling 
under her sceptre, I stood fearless, looking up 
occasionally into her gre}* eyes, wondering what 
she would say or do next. 

“ That will do, child,” she said, with her J upi- 
ter nod. “You may go away and play. You 
are like your father, except bits of you that I don’t 
know — your eyes and eyebrows. I suppose they 
are your mother’s. The Danescombes are not a 
bad stock to come of, as old a family as any in the 
county, only on the wrong side, generally, as to 
politics, when there were politics worth thinking or 
fighting about ; the older branch, but Parliamen- 
tarians : the younger branch managed better, stuck 
to the king, and are in the House of Peers. And 
I hear your father is following the family ways — 
Whig or even Jacobin, or one of those philan- 
thropists who are worse, always minding other 
people’s duties. Don’t flush and blush, child. 
People cannot help what they inherit. I have no 
opinion of people who change their family politics 
or religion ; although it is a ^>ity for them, of 
course, if they happen to be wrong. Your father 


156 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


is a gentleman, and a Danescombe — Danescombe 
of Danescombe. The pedigree is right enough. 
One thing I regret. He should not have gone 
into trade ; though, certainly, younger branches 
and decayed branches sometimes must. It is bet- 
ter than begging, or than that vile law. I’ve seen 
enough of that — always leading one on, and turn- 
ing against one, and making charges for talking 
and writing. Beggarly ! And the king’s service 
certainly does not pay, or the Church, unless there 
is a family living. However, that’s no affair of 
yours. You may come here whenever you like, 
and Amice likes. Only don’t flush and blush, or 
throw yourself into raptures. And if Amice lends 
you a horse, which she may, to ride over the 
Down together, don’t be nervous and throw it 
down, as town children are apt to do. And, if you 
can help it, don’t be a philanthropist. I will have 
nothing to do with philanthropists. You look a 
sensible little maid, but rather soft and melting — 
the kind of stuff those people are made of. And 
being in the family, it is dangerous — infectious, 
too. And, remember, I will have nothing to do 
with philanthropists. There, go and play, or ride, 
or anything you like.” 

And drawing the Bandana handkerchief over 
her face, she dismissed us. 

“ But,” I said to Amice when we were alone, 
“ it is a little trying that your grandmother should 
be deaf just in that way. It makes one feel dis- 
honest not to answer her, especially when she says 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


157 


things about other people. If my father is what 
she calls a philanthropist, I am sure the last thing 
he does is to mind other people’s duties. The 
motto he gave me was , 6 Other people’s rights, and 
our own duties.’ Is it quite impossible to make 
your grandmother understand ? at least about 
father ? ” 

“ Quite,” said Amice. “ And if she did hear 
that motto, she would not like him any better for 
that. She would think he meant it was his duty 
to look after people’s rights and wrongs ; and that 
is exactly what she objects to, as to the black peo- 
ple you are all so fond of. But I like the motto, 
Bride. Only, it might lead one, no one can tell 
where ; at least me” 

The nearer I came to Amice the deeper the 
mystery in her seemed. It was like wandering 
through a great northern pine forest, in the twi- 
light ; glimpses here and glimmerings there, and 
everything seeming to lead into a new infinity. 

What had the shadows been which had lain so 
deep in her early life that they had made the faith 
natural to her a Manichean dualism ? that terrible 
faith always ready to spring on us from the dark- 
ness of sin and sorrow, that evil is co-eternal with 
good, and in might perhaps co-equal. 



CHAPTER X. 

WHOLE ocean of new life and thought 
was open to us through the advent of j 
Madame la Marquise des Ormes, Claire, 
and Leontine. There was also an Abbe, 
madame’s brother, who occasionally appeared, but 
preferred to live in a large seaport town about 
fifteen miles off. M. 1’Abbe, like many of his 
countrymen, was not complimentary to his land of 
refuge. He said the most comprehensible thing 
to him in the character of the English was their 
passion for the sea. He could for himself see no 
way of living in such an island of “ brouillard ” 
and “ bourgeoisie ,” except by keeping constantly 
in view the one means of escape from it. 

Among the four we had brought before us four 
sufficiently characteristic phases of the France of 
our day. 

Madame was Royalist to the core, with the 
chivalrous old French royalty which the death of 
Louis XYI. and Marie Antoinette enkindled into 
a passion and exalted into a religion. Monarchy 
and martyrdom united had surrounded the son of 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


159 


Saint Louis witli a halo so mystically interwoven 
of earthly and heavenly splendors, that to see pro- 
saic fact through it would have passed the penetra- 
tion of any mortal vision. In the later days of 
Louis XIV., and through the reign of Louis XV., 
her family had lived a good deal in retirement on 
their estates. The ladies of the race especially 
had not shared in the sins and splendors of that 
corrupting court, but had lived in familiar and 
gracious intercourse with their peasantry, never 
contemplating the possibility of a state of things 
in which great ladies could do anything but reign 
and distribute alms, and peasants desire anything 
but rapturously to receive alms and serve. 

That there could be any great fundamental 
wrong in the nature of things, which made it the 
highest hope of the majority of laboring men to 
end life as dependent pensioners on the bounty of 
the minority, never occurred to them. How could 
it have done so ? 

Such wrongs intertwined with the innermost 
fabric of society are, I suppose, seldom perceived 
from within, until the slow growth of abuse at 
last interferes with some elementary law of grav- 
itation or cohesion, and the whole edifice crumbles 
into decay or crashes into revolution. 

Besides, unfortunately, it is precisely those who 
would most gladly correct such abuses who natu- 
rally come least in contact with them. Their own 
virtues clear the region immediately around them, 
and if anxious and foreboding politicians talk 


160 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of “Augean stables,” they reply, incredulously, 
and correctly, “Was ever stall cleaner swept than 
mine ? ” 

Madame des Ormes from the first seemed to 
single out our family. She was sure there was 
French blood in our veins — the highest compli- 
ment she could pay ; there was a peculiar curve of 
the eyebrow in my mother’s picture and in me, 
never seen in pure English faces. It was true. 
My mother’s grandfather had been one of the ex- 
iles in the Huguenot persecution. Ours was the 
only house in the town she volunteered to enter. 
My stepmother she considered a little “hour 
geoise but my father’s manners she approved. 
Some people’s manners, she said, were too much 
for them. Like badly made dresses, you could 
never forget that they had them on ; and* some 
people were unfortunate enough to have no man- 
ners at all. In the last category she included 
Madam Glanvil, who was the only person I 
remember her speaking of with a single tinge of 
hauteur. 

Her natural social level was that of the Coun- 
tess of Abbot’s Weir. And I well remember the 
glory reflected on Madame and Claire, and even 
on Leontine, when the Countess’ coach stopped at 
Miss Felicity’s door, and the Earl and Countess 
went up into Madame’s apartment. 

I never knew what happened at Court. Mad- 
ame, with M. l’Abbe and Claire, had been invited 
there with all ceremony, and entertained with all 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


161 


state ; and Claire told me Madam Glanvil had offer- 
ed to have them driven home in the family coach. 
But her mother had declined. u She was only 
a poor emigree ,” she had said to Madam Glanvil, 
u and must disuse herself from such pomps. To 
Claire she said that nothing was so intolerable as 
that etiquette of the province, or “ the great airs of 
the little noblesse.” And she would never go to 
Court again. 

Nor was Madame altogether charitable to 
Amice. She pronounced her a little wild — Mad- 
ame “ liked wild creatures in the forest ; they had 
a fine free grace of their own — but in the salon 
one never knew what they would do next. In a 
word, the whole household was Insular. I am 
afraid,” to Claire, Madame said, with a little com- 
passionate shrug, “ in fact, English .” 

Madam Glanvil, on the other hand, whose 
classifications were rather generic than specific, at 
once set down Madame la Marquise as frivolous 
and given up to vanities, M. P Abbe as an ancient 
dandy, and Claire as a butterfly, and all three as, 
“ in short, French .” The only person of sense and 
character among them, she considered, was Leon- 
tine, but then Leontine was a Protestant, and 
made bargains, and did her work, and came to 
church like any other Christian, “ so that she was 
scarcely to be called a Frenchwoman.” I tried 
often to bring my two groups of friends together, 
but in vain. 

The inevitable result of contact was efferves- 

11 


162 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


cence. Pressed closer, it would have been explo- 
sion, at least, on Madam Glanvil’s side. So I had 
to desist, and content myself with loving them all 
round. 

Meantime, whatever else we learned or unlearn- 
ed, the meaning of many words expanded wonder- 
fully through our intercourse. 

French and English ceased to be the simple, 
plain definitions they had been. It was evident 
to us there were so many kinds of French. And 
to Claire, at least, it soon became evident that 
there were many kinds of English. 

Then that word “ bourgeois how many puz 
zles it made for me ; and also how many it helped 
to explain, in endeavoring to translate it to myself 
or to Claire ! How much of English and French 
social life and politics lay wrapped up in it ! Had 
we absolutely no synonym for it ? 

I had heard Madam Glanvil use the expression 
“town’s folks” with something of the same unflat- 
tering emphasis. But then, with her, that meant 
not merely the lack of a social distinction, but of 
country habits. She would have used it with 
little less depreciation for fashionable men about 
town than for unfashionable men and women in 
Abbot’s Weir. It meant people who could not 
ride, or hunt, or tramp about ploughed fields ; 
effeminate creatures who carried umbrellas, and 
could not brave a herd of cattle. It had indeed to 
do in some measure with trade. Certainly trade 
was not to be accepted except as a last resource, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


163 


and people who contrived to get rich by trade 
were to be set down. 

But, there even, was no sharp impassable bar- 
rier between gentry and “ town’s folks.” People 
of good family had (unfortunately, of course,) to 
live in towns, and to go into business. Claire’s 
father, on the contrary, under the anden regime , 
would have had formally to resign his sword, and 
his cachet of nobility, before he could demean him- 
self by trade. 

In England there was, indeed, an aristocracy 
prouder, perhaps, than in France; but prouder 
because less fenced in. Pride had to hold firm 
the barriers law had left open. Titles which in 
the third generation ceased entirely, and a nobility 
continually recruited from the bench, the manu 
factory, and the counting-house, were in a very 
different sense, sacred from the great old noblesse 
of France. 

“ Middle classes ” — did that express the thought 
better ? In some respects. But it also expressed 
the difference. Middle; that is, between the up- 
per and lower. But where the upper ended and 
the lower began, who could say ? Especially as 
neither upper, middle, nor lower, were stagnant 
waters resting at their own level, but all in a con- 
tinual state of ebb and flow in and through each 
other ; so that, with all due respect to the catechism, 
the “ station to which God has called us ” is by no 
means a fixed line, always perfectly easy to deter- 
mine, in a society where nothing is stationary. 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


161 


“ Pleasant old barriers,” Madame des Ormes 
thought, “ when people were not always struggling 
upwards, but content with each other, themselves, 
and their station. There were “ stations ” in those 
days ; and people had “ leisure.” 

“ Pleasant, picturesque old barriers,” my father 
said, (< except that, within them all the time was 
gathering the flood which swept all barriers away, 
and much soil, and much life, which no floods 
could restore.” 

Pleasant evenings they were, when Madame 
des Ormes and my father sat on each side of the 
great chimney in the Stone parlor. Madame 
always preferred the Stone parlor. She said to 
Claire, who told me, that the Oak parlor was like 
a state-chamber without the Court ; and the great 
drawing-room like a mortuary chapel, without the 
sanctuary, only entered once a year, and terribly 
bourgeoise. But the Stone parlor was like France, 
like the hall of an old chateau where they met 
after the chase. There were the sporting-dogs, 
and the great logs flaming and crackling, and 
cheerful talk, and going in and out, and a feeling 
of life. 

My father spoke French easily, and understood 
it perfectly, a rare accomplishment for Abbot’s 
Weir in those days ; and to Madame his manners 
had a deferential courtesy which she said always 
reminded her of the Old Court. 

Her dress I cannot so clearly recall ; I suppose 
because it always seemed such a natural part of 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


165 


lierself. But her manner charmed me inexpressi- 
bly. There was such vivacity and such suavity 
in it ; such grace and such freedom. And then 
her whole person seemed an organ of speech. 
She spoke not only with her voice; or with her 
eyes, like Amice ; but with every graceful bend of 
her throat, and turn of her arms. And as to her 
hands, their movements were like music. They 
made her conversation as sweet and as varied as 
singing. 

She was, however, not without serious anxiety 
about my father. She thought him, like her poor 
brother the abbe, too u philosopke ; ” and had not 
they proved in Paris to what that led ? Many a 
fragment of their conversation used to drop into 
our minds, as I was playing with Claire or Piers 
by the window, or as we sat silent by the fire, and 
interested me more than anything we were doing. 

They had many a debate over Arthur Young, 
the traveller, in the course of which all kinds of 
curious detail of old French manners and customs 
used to come out. 

And those debates were sure never to spoil any 
one’s temper. Many sparks were struck, but there 
were no explosions. 

There was a common ground of tender pity for 
human creatures in general ; and a sense that the 
world, and even the Church in every corner of it, 
even to that most unsearchable corner within our- 
selves, needs a great deal of setting right, 

Mr. Young, she would admit, might draw but 


166 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


too truly, gloomy pictures of famished men, driven 
in herds across the hills, unfed and unpaid, leaving 
their own fields unfilled to render serfs’ service to 
the seigneur. 

“ But, Mr. Danescombe — he should not have 
left out the other side — there are hard matters 
and hungry laborers in all societies. Or are you, 
perhaps, so fortunate as to have none ? Are those 
parish apprentices you spoke of all exactly content, 
and well fed ? Mr. Young should have come to 
Les Ormes ; and you also, Mr. Danescombe. We 
would have entertained you with an hospitality 
not quite, I hope, unworthy of your own. You 
should have seen how the services our peasants 
had to render us in harvest or vintage or even on 
the roads, were made quite a fete to them. We 
killed our oxen and our fatlings, and spread tables 
for them on the terraces of the chateau ; and we, 
the ladies of the Castle, waited on them ourselves, 
and the sons and daughters of the Castle danced 
with them afterwards on the greensward. It was 
Arcadian ; the costume of the peasantry blending 
with the toilettes of the old Court (each, of course, 
keeping to their own), the prince hand-in-hand 
with the peasant. Our peasants complain of our 
preserving forests for the chase? They were 
never so happy as when they accompanied us in 
the chase, and I assure you many a fine brace of 
game found its way from the seigneur’s pouch to 
the laborer’s pot cm feu. They were afraid to 
complain, perhaps you think ? Quite the contrary. 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


167 


I see here nothing of the free speech there was 
between our people and ourselves. The quick 
wit of our countrymen and countrywomen, more- 
over, I assure you, could give us as good as we 
gave.” 

(I had heard Amice say much the same of the 
negroes.) 

“ They say our noblesse did not care for the 
poor. Mr. Danescombe, never believe it. Did 
not our mother teach us to make petticoats and 
jackets for the old women ? And did not we dress 
the young brides from our own wardrobes with 
our own hands ? Did we not make dainties for 
our sick, and tend them by the sick beds ? You 
should have seen our Christmas fetes and distribu 
tions. The people adored us. So completely of 
the past as all that is, I may say it now without 
vanity. They said no garments wore, and no 
dainties tasted, like those which came from our 
hands. Ah, Mr. Danescombe, they make me for- 
get the Sermon on the Mount, those false accusers. 
But in those days, believe me, there were little 
secrets of that kind between us and the good God, 
which the poor deluded people forget, perhaps He 
will not. You think we were an exceptional fam- 
ily ? My mother was perhaps an exceptional 
woman. Her piety had been learned at Port 
Ttoyal, and some of our friends did sometimes ac- 
cuse it of being ‘ tant soit pen Janseniste .’ One 
of our estates was not far from Port Boyal des 
Champs. As children, we were sometimes taken 


168 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


to see the ruins. My mother could explain them : 
the church which they filled with corn for the 
poor, the gardens and fallen cells made sacred by 
their prayers, made doubly sacred by their charity ; 
and she would never leave those poor up-turned 
graves without praying in memory of the holy 
souls of those who had lain there. As a child, I 
never quite knew whether, because by some inex- 
plicable mischance they had missed the way of 
salvation and needed our prayers, or because we 
needed theirs. It was difficult. They were so 
saintly, so heroic, and yet condemned by those 
who should have known. Ah ! Mr. Danescombe, 
sometimes a sad thought comes to me about our 
France. I wonder whether it can be possible, what 
our poor Leontine says, whether indeed we have 
driven away our heroes and saints, who could have 
rescued us ; and so have nothing left to our country 
but the martyrs, who can only die for us. These, 
you know, the good God, and the malicious foe, 
suffer not to fail in any age or communion. The 
tradition of those good men and women of Port 
Koval lingered long among the poor of the district. 
And we called our little daughter herself after one 
of them, Claire — from the friend of St. Francis, 
founder of the poor Claires — and Angelique after 
the Mere Angelique.” 

“ It was a beautiful and tender tribute, Ma 
dame,” my father said. “ May Mademoiselle be 
worthy of both her patronesses.” 

“ I do not say there were no evils that deserved 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


169 


chastisement, and needed correction,” she would 
saj. “ God knows there were many. Our Great 
Monarch had been too much like a god, for a mor- 
tal man, though a son of St. Louis, safely to 
endure. There are traditions of Versailles we 
would willingly blot out. But we were changing 
all that. We / Mr. Danescombe, the poor no- 
blesse whom your Whigs abuse, and whom our 
Jacobins have guillotined. Was it not we, alas ! 
who commenced the revolution ? Did not M. de 
Hoailles (M. le Marquis) propose equal taxation, 
the purchase from our order of certain feudal 
rights, and the absolute abolition of others, such as 
the corvSes, or any compulsory service without 
compensation ? And Mirabeau, and M. de Lafay- 
ette, mistaken as some of us may have thought 
them, were these men of the bourgeoisie or of the 
canaille f We had true instincts. We felt the 
tide must turn, was turning, and that we must 
lead it. And did we not try ? We, and even our 
king ? ” 

“ You did try nobly, madame,” my father said, 
sorrowfully, “ at last.” 

“ Ah, I know ; it was too late. The stream 
was a flood. The tide was a deluge. But how 
could we tell ? What could we do ? It was, in- 
deed, too late.” 

“ Ah ! Madame,” my father said very gently, 
“ I am afraid all reforms are too late which wait 
until the tide turns. All reforms which save from 
revolution must not be with, but against the 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


170 

stream. God grant we find this out in time. God 
grant England may not silence her heroes, and 
only be left her martyrs ! ” 

But little Claire ! Madame des Ormes, charm- 
ing and sweet as she was always, remained a for- 
eigner, an exile, with all her sweet familiar grace, 
a little apart, on a height we never forget, and I 
am not sure that she did. 

But Claire was our own from very early days, 
our very own, with a difference, a fascinating 
difference of nature, of tradition, of ideas, of tastes, 
which made her always as fresh and interesting as 
a new story. 

If Amice lifted me outside our home, not with- 
out a shock, so as to see that in a new light, Claire 
lifted us outside Abbot’s Weir, and even England, 
and that without any shock. She saw everything 
and every person through such a sunny medium, 
and made the world so delightfully larger. 

For one thing she learned English, which her 
mother never attempted, and Leontine and M. 
l’Abbe never achieved further than as a means of 
commercial intercourse with the “ barbarous peo- 
ple” who had, they confessed, received them u with 
no little kindness.” She learned it carefully, 
thoroughly, only to the end deliciously blending 
her own idioms with ours, and giving to our Eng- 
lish a clear staccato definiteness and delicacy which 
pointed it, as often she pointed my work, with the 
last finish of her accurate fingers. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


171 


And she taught Piers and me, in return, her 
clear graceful French, enjoying our amusement with 
her mistakes, and never laughing at ours. 

Claire was not exactly a child, according to our 
English ideas. She had no shyness, or awkward- 
ness ; she seemed to have been born with that gra- 
cious tact, and that ready savoirfaire which made 
the wheels of every day’s life run smoothly. 
Where we were self-conscious, possessed by self, 
she was self-possessed, possessing herself, and all 
her faculties. 

It 'was her natural tendency to agree with peo- 
ple, and please them if possible ; to find out their 
angles to avoid them ; just as in our Teutonic na- 
tures there is often a natural tendency not to agree 
with people, and to find out their angles to rub 
against them. Hers was the graciousness of a true 
aristocracy, not instilled by maxim, but infused by 
the life of centuries. Stiffened into a maxim, it 
might have read, “ Yield ; because it is our right 
to command P Through all the courtesy there was 
a touch of courtly dignity which made half its 
charm. 

It was a sunny atmosphere that Claire lived in, 
a positive sunshine, like that of her own land of 
purple vintages and golden harvests ; she actually 
saw things softened, illumined, with all possible 
lights brought out, and the shadows glowing with 
reflections of the light that dwelt within herself ; 
while many of us see things at best through a grey, 
clear, defining, unillumining daylight, and pride our- 


172 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


selves in consequence on our truthfulness ; as if sun- 
shine were not as true as mere daylight. If Amice 
was like a Northern forest, full of glades and mys- 
teries, Claire was like her own sunny land of vin- 
tage and harvests and valleys, that stand so thick- 
ly with corn that they laugh and sing. 

To make every-day life as pleasant as we can to 
every one around us may not be the very highest 
aim, but it is a good golden background for the 
severer work of life to be relieved upon. And it 
was on that golden ground Claire’s world was 
painted. 

Brave she was by instinct and by chivalry of race, 
and ready to make her little person a shield against 
the world for those she loved or pitied, as she proved 
that memorable afternoon when she kissed me with 
the foolscap on. 

But the joys of the fight were not at all compre- 
hensible to her. Her delight was to make every 
one at peace with one another, and pleased with 
one another, and also with themselves. 

When she came into your house, she always 
found out something pleasant in it you had scarce- 
ly noticed before. If your windows looked south, 
there was nothing so pleasant as a sunny aspect ; 
if due north, there was nothing like looking out 
from the cool shadow into the sunlight. 

She taught us first to see how beautiful our 
quaint old town was, in its green hollow of the 
hills. She had especial delight in our wild flowers. 
The banks of the three ancient roads which wound 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


173 


from it up the hills, worn deep by the rains and 
the tread of centuries, were, she said, each one a 
hanging garden of delights, from spring to winter. 
She and Piers and I used to go on endless expedi- 
tions laden with baskets, which in the spring were 
filled with masses of primroses, violets, or blue hy- 
acinths. These, of course, we knew and loved of 
old ; but Claire had a liberality in her love of flow- 
ers beyond ours. Everything came well to her ; 
things we had called weeds and rubbish, she con- 
trived to make lovely nosegays of ; ragged robins, 
tC twelve o’ clocks,” foxgloves, woodrufte, blue corn- 
flowers. She made her mother’s little apartment 
gay all the summer through; and when flowers 
failed, she brought in leaves. Leaves were her 
specialty, she said, bramble leaves above all. She 
said the flowers were her English china, better than 
all the old majolica and Sevres in the chateau, and 
the autumn leaves were her English bijouterie and 
bric-a-brac, richer than all the old bronzes, and 
ormolu, with their metallic crimsons, and bronze, 
and gold. And “ in shape ” she said “ flowers were 
nothing to leaves.” “ The good God,” she thought, 
“ having left out the colors and perfumes, had all 
the more beauty to spare for the design.” 

How choice and fair she made that little room 
of her mother’s ! 

In the corner was a little, low, narrow bed, like 
a couch ; but Leontine had draped it with white 
muslin, always fresh, and contrived a coverlid out 


174 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of some antique brocade, so that it looked like a 
canopied throne. 

Then there was a little table, with a mirror be- 
hind it, and upon it a few relics, such as a jewelled 
snuff-box, with a portrait of a grandmother, powder- 
ed and frizzed, and one or two toilet ornaments. 
And in the window a common deal table, draped 
with muslin and frills, and always set with those 
rich masses of flowers, or leaves, in common white 
earthenware dishes, but looking as natural and at 
home as if they were growing on their own green 
banks. In a corner, a little table like an altar with 
a crimson antependium, and a delicately-carved, 
pathetic ivory crucifix on it ; and a richly-bound 
prayer-book. On the walls were four or five min- 
iatures grouped, and one larger head, often tender- 
ly garlanded, of the king, Louis XYI. 

We had nutting and blackberrying expeditions, 
Piers and Claire, and Dick Fyford and I, Claire 
declaring that no fruit in the garden was equal to 
blackberries ; and many an opportunity was afford- 
ed to Piers of risking his life by gathering nuts 
and berries from impossible places up precipices 
and over rivers. 

Our old abbey buildings, also, were great bonds 
of union between, us. 

These, Claire said, were as much hers as ours, 
being built by the monks, who belonged to all 
Christendom, when there was one Christendom, 
long ago. And she made the old arches and tow- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


175 


ers live to us, by telling us of an abbey close to her 
father s chateau, whera real living nuns had been 
cloistered, where the lamp w T as always burning 
night and day in the church before the altar, and 
a sister kneeling before it, until the Revolution 
had quenched the lamp, and scattered the sisters, 
and turned the convent into a factory, and the 
church into a granary. 

I suppose Claire would not have been a great 
reformer of wrongs ; although she certainly would 
not consciously have inflicted any. She would 
scarcely have pulled of her own will against the 
stream. Side by side with any one on whom that 
strain of energy devolved, she could lighten the 
strain inconceivably by delicately indicating how 
to avoid all avoidable collisions, by keeping rowers 
and steersmen awake to every counter-current and 
every possible favoring breeze ; above all, by keep- 
ing alive in the hearts of the toiling crew, that gen- 
erous candor, open to every palliation and every 
excuse for opponents, which is not a little hard to 
maintain when the stream against which they pull 
is the injustice and the selfishness of angry human 
beings. 

As a sufferer of wrong, nothing could be 
sweeter than she. Her hardest epithet for those 
who had murdered her father, and driven them all 
houseless and destitute from their fair, bright coun- 
try home, was “deluded.” Or if any severer 
denunciations ever passed her lips, they were al- 
ways levelled at an impersonal “ On” which had 


176 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


deluded every one. “ Our poor, dear, deluded peo- 
ple,” she would say, “ they (“ On”) persuaded 
them that they would find gold mines in our cha- 
teaux, that they would be Rentiers, and all their 
starving children live like princesses, without im- 
poverishing us. I am sure they never meant to 
ruin us. How could they, with all mamma and 
papa had done for them all their lives, and grand- 
mamma before? We loved thenq these poor peas- 
ants and surely they had loved us. They had 
danced us on their shoulders, and sung us songs, 
and laughed with delight when I lisped in imita- 
tion. I was their own in a way much as my moth- 
er’s. And all at once they (on) came from Paris, 
and told them a quantity of falsehoods about the 
cruelties of the noblesse ; perhaps also some true 
things, but certainly not what we had done. And 
those poor peasants went mad. And one night 
Leontine came in the middle of the night, and 
drew me out of bed, and huddled on anything she 
could find, and took me by the little back door, 
where my mother was waiting, through the wood, 
up the hill, to a cabin, our woodman’s hut. And 
there we looked down and saw the dear old chateau 
illuminated more brightly than for any of our fetes, 
but for the last time ; flames breaking out of every 
window, and those poor, mad people shouting and 
dancing round it, where they used to dance with 
us, or wait for alms. They did not steal our things. 
They burnt them, Leontine said. And all because 
of what some wicked nobles had done somewhere 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


177 


else to other people. Was it not strange ? Leon tine 
said it was because of things farther off even than 
that. She said things more precious than ormolu 
and ebony had been thrown into the flames, in old 
times ; men and women, men and women of God ! — 
her forefathers, she meant, — the Huguenots. She 
said it was God “avenging His elect’' at last. 
But we did not burn the people, nor hurt them, 
nor any one that we could help. And it seems a 
very strange kind of justice that my father, who 
was good to every one, should suffer because some 
one else’s grandfather was cruel to people we never 
saw.” 

Poor little Claire, “ solidarity ” was a word that 
did not exjst in her French. And yet in other ways 
she understood well that nations are not mere con- 
glomerations of independent atoms, but that there 
is a deep and terrible reality in the words “ nation- 
al life.” 

Leontine had her own interpretation of events, 
to which she steadily adhered. She was the only 
one among them to whom the history of the Invo- 
lution did not seem an unintelligible chaos. “ Gen- 
eration after generation, Monsieur,” she said to my 
father, “ our poor France has driven away her he- 
roes, those who could and would have saved us. 
It was not only that they hunted the Protestants 
away. It was the strongest and bravest of all the 
Protestants they hunted away. The gentle, and 
timid, and helpless, and womanly remained. The 
men , the soldiers of the faith, the heroes, fled or es- 
12 


178 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


■ caped, to you, to Holland, to Prussia. Our strength 
and courage went to strengthen you, in Holland, 
England, and Prussia. And so when the flood 
came, there were none strong enough to stem it. 
Even the ladies and gentlemen of Port Boyal, 
Catholics of the truest, spoke too much truth for 
France, and they were trodden down. Generation 
after generation our poor France has driven away 
her heroes, and silenced her prophets, and now she 
has none but her martyrs left. But those, Monsieur, 
believe me, of the best. All our great ladies and 
lords can suffer, cheerfully, nobly, piously, like 
apostles. There is blood in France as pure and 
noble as any in the world. But alas ! it seems only 
to flow for the scaffold.” 




CHAPTER XI. 



ERY soon after my first day with Amice 
I Glanvil at Court, it was decreed that Pier’s 
v path and mine were to separate ; that he 
liwas thenceforth to attend Mr. Rabbidge’s 
boys’ school, while I was to continue with Miss 
Felicity, with the understanding that three after- 
noons a week were to be spent with Miss Loveday 
learning embroidery, fine needlework, dress-mak- 
ing, and millinery in general, as far as Miss Love- 
day’s tastes could instruct me. 

It was a terrible day to me, that first morning 
when Piers and I had to go our different ways to 
school. 

He had a longer walk than mine, and had to 
start first. 

He was full of glee. The last remnants of child- 
ish attire had been laid aside. There was in those 
days at Abbot’s W eir no intermediate boy’s costume. 
Piers sallied forth, fully equipped in a miniature 
edition of my father’s “ coat, hosen, and hat.” 

His very shoes had a manly tramp in them, as 
he marched down the street. And I stood alone 


180 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


watching at the old arched door, feeling terribly 
feeble, female,” and forlorn. 

At the corner he had the grace to halt and 
turn and give me a protective masculine wave of 
the hand, before he disappeared, so glad and free 
in his sensible tight garments, made of things that 
would not tear, made so as to be convenient for 
climbing and racing, and everything I delighted 
in, and in general with a view to being as little ob- 
structive as possible ; while mine seemed expressly 
constructed with a view to being obstructions in 
the way of everything it was best worth while to do, 
and tilling up all the leisure spaces of one’s life 
with making and mending them. 

He had good reason to be glad ; and for him I 
was proud and glad too. I would not have had 
him go a day longer with me for all it cost me. 

To him it was a beginning, and through him 
for me also. But to me it was an ending also : 
so many things that are beginnings to brothers are 
endings to sisters. 

He was to go on and out in so many ways 
— out into the world of boys, and of men, out into 
the world of Greek and Latin, and all kinds of wis- 
dom, ancient and modern — while I was to go no fur- 
ther than round and round Miss Felicity’s history 
and mythology lessons, the geographical lists of 
countries, provinces, and capitals, and the first 
rules of arthmetic, my only progress being, out of 
“ round hand,” business-like and legible, into “ small 
hand,” angular, ladylike, and indefinite. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


181 


In my double relation to Piers I felt smitten. 
As his sister, I was never more to be his constant, 
hourly companion ; as his “ little mother ” I could 
watch over him and protect him no more, except 
as a helpless hen-mother a brood of ducklings. 
He was launched into an element where I could 
not follow him ; he must make his own way, meet 
his own temptations, encounter his own dangers, 
light his own battles, while I could only cluck 
and flutter my wings on the shore. 

And he liked it, of course ; he delighted in it, 
felt a generous trust that I delighted in for his sake, 
and had no idea, should never have any idea, 1 
determined, that when he was quite out of sight, 

I went into the Stone parlor and seizing the kitten, 
rushed up with her to the inmost recess of the old 
nursery, which was now my bed-room, and seating 
myself on the little cot that had been his, where I 
used to say my prayers beside him, and had felt 
like his little mother, cried bitterly, and sobbingly 
told pussy that now I had no one to take care of 
but her, “no one in the world!” 

The old church bell striking the school-hour 
broke in on my lamentations.- I symbolically 
anointed my head, and literally washed my face, 
crossed the market-place, and got into the school 
before the chimes had finished ; so that no one, I 
flattered myself, would see I thought it anything 
but a step onward in life, to have a brother at Mr. 
Babbidge’s. 

But all the morning the tears kept very near 


182 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


the brim, and I felt Amice Gian vil’s searching wist- 
ful eyes on me. 

At the end of the morning school, w T hen we 
were left alone, as we often were, while she took the 
dainty little repast prepared for her dinner, she 
came up to me and grasped both my hands with 
one of her abrupt passionate movements. 

“ Bride, I cannot be sorry for you,” she said ; 
“ I have tried. But it is of no use. Next to be- 
ing a man oneself, there can be nothing better 
than to see one’s brother beginning to be on the 
way to be a man. Think of what they can do I 
Think what he is going to learn to be, he and Dick 
Fyford, and all of them. They are gone to learn 
to be soldiers, to fight for England, and sailors to 
man great ships for England ; and doctors to cure 
people’s diseases, and lawyers to set people’s wrongs 
right. (For that is what I think lawyers are for, 
though Granny says they are only to puzzle right 
and wrong together so cleverly, that no one can 
find the way through without paying toll to them.) 
And masters, to employ men ; or writers of books, 
to teach men. How can you be anything for a 
moment but glad that Piers is beginning? ’’ 

For she knew quite well I was not very glad. 

“I shall be very glad to-morrow, Amice,” I 
said. 

“ Then be glad to-day,” she replied. “ I have 
no patience with people who keep turning their 
faces the wrong way, and sighing and crying be- 
cause we must leave things behind. Of course, we 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


183 


are always leaving things behind. Look the other 
way, and see what is before you, Bride Danes- 
combe.” 

“ I do not mind leaving things behind, Amice,” 
I said, thinking her a little hard. 

“ Then don't be left behind,” she replied, with 
her rare little laugh. “ Go on ! I mean to go on, 
although I am only a girl. But then, of course, I 
have no brother, so I have to do for both. But if 
I had a brother — a brave little brother like Piers, 
wouldn’t we set some things right, together ! ” 

“ But I cannot go on, Amice,” I said. “ You 
know I have come to an end of Miss Felicity’s les- 
sons. And there is nothing to do but to go round 
again, and to sit still and sew.” 

“ Sitting still and sewing is dull,” she said, em- 
phatically. “ Happily for me, Chloe does all that, 
and there are plenty more.” Then, suddenly, her 
face flushed as with a new thought, and she 
added, “ Do you know, Bride, I think I will ask 
Granny to let me learn sewing with you. One 
never knows what one may have to do. And in 
learning of Miss Loveday one learns so many things 
more than she knows she is teaching.” 

That was a bright prospect for me — afternoons 
with Amice and Miss Loveday ; and I left the room 
greatly cheered. 

But in the afternoon little Claire had made 
some excuse of a message to our house, and we 
crossed the market-place back to Miss Felicity’s 
together. 


184 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


She said nothing ; but as she put her dear little 
hands in mine, I knew well what she meant. She 
wanted me to feel I had some one to take care of 
still. And in the evening, between Amice’s bravery 
and Claire’s soothing, I felt almost as bright as Piers 
himself when he swung into the passage, and his 
joyous voice rang through the house, calling for me. 

There was a button to sew on and a rent to 
mend in those clothes which I had envied as so 
imperishable. And there was a history, brief but 
vivid, of the encounter with a bully of a big boy, 
which had occasioned the damage. 

Piers had begun his battle of life with wrest- 
lings literal enough. He did not tell me the name 
of his adversary, nor could I gather quite clearly 
the issue of the encounter except what might be in- 
ferred from the explanatory statement that “he 
could not help it, he could not see any fellow, what- 
ever his size, throw stones at old black Cato, and 
call him names, and not try to stop it, and if the 
big fellow were to try it again, he must do the 
same.” 

He had, moreover, a suspicious mark on his 
eyebrow, which, with all his anxiety to conceal it, 
and all my bathings, grew deeper in tint, so that 
Piers had to select retired places, lest my step- 
mother’s vigilant eyes should detect that he had be- 
gun boy life so pugnaciously. 

It was plain that there would be points enough 
at which my brother’s life and mine would meet, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


185 


and that he would need his little mother at many 
extremes yet. 

Apparently, the “big fellow ” did try it again, 
for Piers came back a few days afterwards with a 
peculiar twinkle in his eyes, and with a scar on his 
cheek. 

u He did not give it to me,” was all he vouched 
in explanation, a it was only a corner of a stone I 
came against in falling. But he was under, and I 
don’t think he will try it again.” 

“ Other people’s rights and our own duties ? ” 
I ventured to ask. 

But Piers would explain no further. 

“ It was a mean thing, in his opinion, to brag 
of things out of school before girls.” 

The force of the contrasts was strong on him. 

Dick Fyford, however, told me enough to show 
that Piers had won his spurs. 

Claire and I were decidedly proud of Piers’ 
black eye. It consoled us for being girls and being 
left behind, to find him so unmistakable a boy. 

But all our small public opinion was by no 
means unanimous on the subject. My stepmother 
“ must beg that for the future, if Piers could not 
keep out of quarrels, he would quarrel in a gentle- 
manly way, with gentlemanly boys, and not get 
his face disfigured in a manner which made it un- 
fit for ladies to sit at meals with him ; and, above 
all, not in his new coat. She wondered Mr. Danes- 
combe did not take the matter more seriously. 


186 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


But it was so difficult to persuade him to take any- 
thing about the children seriously.” 

My father merely said, — 

“ My dear, it is impossible not to envy a little 
the sanguine Quixotism of these young people. 
Piers,” he added, “ if your black eye would begin 
to set the whole world and all its wrongs right, it 
would be a very well-invested black eye ; and no 
doubt you are of opinion it will. But remember 
you have only two eyes, and only one new coat, 
and for our sakes please take proportionate care of 
each.” 

Piers and my stepmother were both silenced, 
neither seeing clearly where the little sarcasm fit- 
ted best. 

But Miss Loveday was profoundly serious on 
the subject. 

“ My dear Piers,” she said, in her gentlest voice, 
falling, as usual with her in agitated moments, into 
the “ plain,” Quaker mode of speech, “ Thee will 
never win the true battles in that way. The weap- 
ons of the true warfare are not fists.” 

“ But boys have not any others, Miss Loveday,” 
he said. 

“ It is written, ‘ Love your enemies,’ ” said 
Miss Loveday, with tears in her eyes. “ Forgive 
them that hate you.” 

a But I have no enemies,” replied Piers, “ and 
as to forgiving people who hurt other people who 
are helpless, I cannot. I might have hated him if 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 187 

we could not have fought it out ; hut now there is 
no need to think of it any more.” 

Miss Lovejoy shook her head. 

“ Pride can forgive an injury it has avenged,” 
she said. “ Besides, we are told what to do if we 
are smitten.” 

Piers made no reply ; in the art of verbal self- 
defence he was not strong. Besides, Miss Loveday 
was a woman, and deaf ; and to defend oneself 
against a woman in the vehement form argument 
is apt to appear to take with deaf people seemed 
to him, I believe, unchivalrous. But he said after- 
wards to me, — 

“ It says nowhere, Bride, that we are to do 
nothing but be patient if other people are smitten 
on the cheek. And if the Sermon on the Mount 
means that, it must be meant for men, not for boys. 
Grown men have the Assizes and the Parlia- 
ment, and all that kind of thing to stop other peo- 
ple from doing wrong ; but we have nothing except 
our fists. Besides, there is the Old Testament. 
David and all of them often had to fight.” 

“ Claire and I don’t think you at all wrong,” I 
said, u nor, I think, does father.” 

But this did not console Piers. I think he 
was more ashamed of our admiration of Miss Love- 
day’s remonstrance. 

“ It is hard to have such a fuss about nothing, 
only because I was so unlucky as to get hit where 
it could be seen. Boys are always getting hit, of 
course.” 


188 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


In Ulphilas’ translation of the Scriptures for the 
Goths, we are told that the translator left out the 
Book of Kings, thinking his Goths too likely to 
draw such encouragement as Piers did from the 
warlike proceedings therein recorded. 

But Piers had plunged into the primitive age 
of Lynch-law, and “ vigilance committees,” with 
which the world is always renewing its boyhood, 
for young human creatures and young nations. 

Homer seemed to him an imperishable picture 
of life ; only he could never make out how the 
Greeks could both scold and fight. The scolding, 
he thought, was the natural share of those who 
could not fight ; and the talking, of those who 
could not work, or make . 

Criticism he considered the natural province of 
women, or of men who have nothing to do. It 
was not till later that he learned how some talking 
is making, and some words are battling. 

The streams of our lives seemed running very 
far apart. For as Piers’ life went forth more and 
more into the din and tumult, mine withdrew 
more and more into the stillness and retirement. 

So much farther apart are boyhood and girlhood, 
than womanhood and manhood, the parting and 
distribution necessary to the deeper meeting and 
uniting. 

Even our amusements separated. Claire and 
I pursued our strawberry, and flower, and black- 
berry gatherings, and nuttings, our gardenings, and 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


189 


rambles alone, while Piers and Dick Fyford were 
shouting over cricket and football. 

It was chiefly in making and mending that our 
lives seemed still linked. 

For ministries in the form of mending there 
was no lack of opportunity. And Piers, now pro- 
moted to a real carpenter’s bench and perilous work- 
man’s tools, constructed many a basket and box, 
and even chair and table, for Claire and me. 

Amice, lie always continued to maintain, was 
“ almost as good as a boy besides, she had the 
glory of three additional years ; and with her (his 
self-banishment from Court having been tacitly 
annulled in consideration of Granville Sharpe’s 
achievements) he had many a daring gallop, not to 
say steeplechase, over the downs and moorlands. 

But it was always the flowers which Claire 
loved that he contrived to remember, and to pour 
out now and then in a careless, casual way from 
his pockets, when he returned from his expeditions, 
and to empower me, if I liked, to carry over the 
way. 

Meantime, we sewed, and Loveday listened, like 
Joan of Arc, to her “ voices, ” and talked to us. 
That longing for the liberation of the negro slaves 
which she had inherited from her Quaker ancestry, 
and which had been as a patriotic passion to her 
lonely life, could not but come out in those long quiet 
afternoons. At first she hesitated to speak of it be- 
fore Amice. But one day, when she had broken 
off in some story of wrong, Amice rose, and coming 


190 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


close to her, said in those low clear tones Loveday 
always heard so well, — 

“ Do not stop. You cannot tell me worse than 
I know. When I was a child, I heard the cries 
from the punishment house ; I saw the spiked col- 
lars, and the scars. You cannot tell me worse 
than I fear. Tell me, if you can, anything to 
give me hope.” 

And Loveday told us the story of the struggle, 
so that the far-off fields of Pennsylvania and New 
England, where John Woolman and Anthony Ben- 
azet toiled for emancipation until not one Quaker 
held a slave, grew to us a land of sacred romance. 

Dear to us also was the story of the poor 
bruised and half-blinded slave, Jonathan Strong, 
left to starve by his master; how he was nursed, 
and fed, and tended, and clothed by Granville 
Sharpe and his brother the surgeon ; and then how 
out of that movement of natural pity, obeyed, 
grew the whole noble immortal work of Granville 
Sharpe’s life ; how, alone, against the stream of 
lawyers and judges, and against the law itself em- 
bodied in an iniquitous decision, and confirmed 
by the opinion of Blackstone, he turned the stream, 
and brought round lawyers and judges, and at last 
the very law itself, constraining Lord Mansfield to 
demand the broad issue which he had so long eva- 
ded, and to pronounce the liberating words, that 
whenever a slave touches English soil he is free, 
thus virtually pronouncing slavery itself a wrong, 
and laying the axe at the root of the tree which 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


191 


from that moment began unperceived to totter to its 
fall. 

So we sat and sewed and listened afar off to 
the echoes of many warfares, until under Miss Love- 
day’s influence, sewing itself became ennobled to 
me, and seemed an essential part of the warfare. 

“ For in all wars,” she said/ 6 the battles are 
but the crises of the campaign, the tests of strength 
long-trained and long-tried. People are victorious 
by virtue of what they were before the battle. It 
is not only the men who wield the weapons that 
fight, but the men who bring the meat and bread, 
the men who till and plough, and sow the corn and 
herd the cattle, and,” she added, with a growing 
intensity in her voice, “ the women who bake, and 
milk, and churn, and sew, and bind up the wounds.” 

Men’s work: tilling, herding, ploughing, and 
fighting. 

Women’s work: cooking, sewing, and nursing; 
that is, making raw material of all kinds, material, 
mental and moral, corn, axioms, principles, into 
bread for daily use and lint to bind up actual 
wounds. 

Claire and I grew quite content with our fem- 
inine lot. But Amice said “ some women had to 
take their share in the actual fighting, she believed.” 

“ Queens,” I conceded. 

“ All women have to be a kind of queens,” she 
said, ‘‘when there are no men in the family. 
There is no Salic law which screens orphaned or 


192 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


widowed women from taking their place on the 
throne, or their part in the battle.” 

And sometimes, she said to Miss Loveday, ct It 
is the waiting that is so trying. If it were all real 
working, I would not mind a bit what the work 
was. It is the waiting and doing nothing for any 
one that eats into one’s heart like rust.” 

“ W aiting need not be doing nothing,” Loveday 
said. “ I have a good deal of it, and I have not 
found it so.” 

“ Waiting may be waiting on God,” she added 
very softly, “and I think there is little work as 
good as that.” 

And as we looked at her patient face, so pale 
and worn, and yet so often radiant from within, 
we understood something of what she meant. 




CHAPTER XII. 


is characteristic of all truly upward paths 
hat as we rise the little hills grow less, 
md the high hills higher. 

Happy for us when the heights of our 
childhood are so truly high that they do not sink, 
hut rise, with our rising, and only seem the more 
above us the nearer we approach them. It was 
always thus with Loveday Benbow, as through the 
years I grew to understand better what she was. 
She was in so many ways a centre to our little 
circle ; partly by virtue of the very stillness and 
unchangeableness of her life amid our changing re- 
volving conditions ; by the simple fact of her being 
always there, and much more by the fact of her 
being always “ all there?' 

Invalids have little idea how much the very 
stillness and monotony of their sick chambers (so 
hard often for them to comprehend or bear) tend 
to make them a sanctuary where others, stepping 
aside from the tumultuous world outside, are calm- 
ed, refreshed*, and rested. 

Loveday was our centre also, because she lived 
*3 



194 : 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


bo near the true Centre, which is the Sun, and 
therefore with her heart in the glow of that cen- 
tral sunlight, her mind looked freely all around, 
and saw things in their true relations and propor- 
tions, for us all ; as we in the coil and tumult could 
seldom do. 

She became the “ eye ” of our little landscape, 
as still waters do, by simply reflecting the light. 

Against the stream, as many of her convictions 
were, she never seemed contending so much as fol- 
lowing; calmly floating, or rather sailing on, be- 
cause her inmost spirit had found the “ rushing 
mighty wind ” which “ breathes upon the slain, and 
they live ; ” the Spirit which broods on the face of 
the waters, and they are full of the. living. She 
was borne on, calmly, by the breath mightier than 
all the torrents of the world. 

With her the deepest things in us all were 
opened, to ourselves and to her. 

If Amice had lifted me first to a point of view 
outside my home, and Claire to one outside our 
England, Loveday Benbow lifted us all to a point 
of ..view from which we felt there was an outside, 
a glorious “ expansion ” a starry “ firmament ” be- 
yond our whole visible world. 

Piers was her prime favorite. She loved him 
almost as much as I did, and more than she did 
me, which was saying much. 

His school life was not an eventful one. After 
that first conflict, he was seldom in the wars, or at 
least we did not hear of it. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


195 


The joys of battle were dear in themselves to 
Dick Fyford. But helping, not fighting, was what 
Piers delighted in ; although, if the fighting came 
in course of the helping, he took to it heartily 
enough. The energy which in Dick was apt to 
turn to destructiveness, in Piers went to construc- 
tion. 

He had as much boyish delight in making a 
ship or a shed, or a model water-wheel, and making 
them well, as Dick had in maiming his uncle’s 
trees and his own limbs by reckless climbing. 

I cannot say that in “ book-learning” as taught 
by Mr. Pabbidge, he excelled. 

He looked at that time on the writers of books, 
rather as mere talkers on an extended scale. 

And talking as I have said, he regarded as the 
especial province of woman ; or of people in gen- 
eral who could not or would not work. Thus, on 
all professions of which speech was the medium, 
he looked not without contempt. 

Two careers in life commended themselves to 
him. He wished to be a manufacturer or a doctor. 

Doctors and manufacturers, he said, knew what 
they were about. To cure men, and to make 
things, was plain honest work. That is, the ideal 
of those callings was clear to him. They were 
something like keeping a garden, and tilling it, or 
keeping down the thorns and thistles of the wilder- 
ness. 

To be a doctor he thought the best. The de- 
light in watching the ways of birds and beasts, 


196 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


which was natural to him, inclined him to natural 
history, and the skill and accuracy with which he 
handled things, might avail him in surgery. 

What his conversations with Loveday were 
about, I often did not know. She used to say the 
boy’s spirit dwelt among the “ realities,” among 
“ the things that are , justice, goodness, and truth,” 
unconsciously quoting Plato. She greatly longed 
for him to become a physician. There was a pas- 
sage in George Fox’s journal to which she especially 
delighted to refer. “ The physicians,” George Fox 
wrote (lamenting over the declension of all the pro- 
fessions from their true ideal), u were out of the 
wisdom of God, by which the creatures were made, 
and so knew not their virtues. But they might be 
brought back into the true wisdom of God, the 
Word of Wisdom by which all things are.” 
And to this end she believed Piers, with his honest 
heart, clear judgment, his delight to “ hear and to 
ask questions ” of every one and everything, his 
determination to see and know things as they are, 
might greatly help. 

I suppose his early revulsion from literature 
was owing partly to Mr. Babbidge’s mode of in- 
struction. W ith Mr. Kabbidge literature was strict- 
ly “ letters,” in the literal sense : the instrument 
was everything. Even the great old Greek dra- 
mas and histories were to him rather herbariums 
of classical expressions than living fields of thought 
and beauty. The climax of attainment set before 
Piers was not to understand JEschylus or Herodo- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


197 


tus and through them Greek life and thought, but 
to write Greek verses, in which what was said was 
quite immaterial if only it was classically said. 

It took years of living to counteract the effect 
of those years of learning, and to bring him back 
through the realities of the present to the glorious 
realities of the past. 

Also it was natural to him not to take the same 
turn as our brother Francis ; and Francis took at 
once to literature in Mr. Babbidge’s sense of it. 
“ Words for the sake of words ” did not at all repel 
him. To be an “ elegant scholar ” seemed to him, 
and to Mr. and Mrs. Danescombe, a lofty ambition. 

Francis became Mr. Rabbidge’s favorite scholar. 
His memory was accurate, and his taste in a cer- 
tain cold and superficial way correct ; and the glory 
of prizes of the “first place ” and of public recita- 
tions was exactly the kind of glory he appreciated 
and his mother delighted in. 

Very early she began to suggest that it would 
be a loss to the reputation of the town if Francis 
were not sent to the university ; while at the same 
time a year or two more or less of school could 
make no difference to Piers, whose tastes were not 
in any way opposed to commerce. My vanity and 
ambition were often aroused on behalf of Piers. 
But Piers was not to be thus roused. He had am- 
bitions ; but not on that level. 

That Amice Glanvil and I should be at home 
with Loveday, and even Piers, and open our inmost 
world to her was natural and obvious enough, she 


198 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


being the dovelike winged creature that Amice 
Platonically said she was, and we sorely in want of 
such brooding warmth. 

Amice having free range of her paternal library 
at Court, had been greatly delighted on behalf of 
Loveday when she made a discovery 4 * in an old 
translation of Plato of his theory of “ wings secret- 
ly growing in the soul here preparatory to her free 
expanded life hereafter.” 

Loveday’s spiritual wings were, Amice felt sure, 
already fully developed ; wings that could make a 
nest anywhere — on any rock, for her nestlings, and 
could also soar far beyond our ken. It was only 
natural, therefore, that we motherless creatures 
should nestle beneath them. 

But with Dick Fyford, the most militant and un- 
Quakerlike among us, it was the same. 

From very early days he was always either 
falling into desperate quarrels, or in desperate love, 
not unfrequently both together. And in all cases 
Miss Loveday was his chosen confidant. 

“ She always took things so seriously,” he said, 
u and did not make fun of a fellow.” And a seri- 
ous tax on any one’s sympathy it must have been 
to take Dick Fyford’s loves and wars in earnest, so 
frequently were the “ scoundrelly dogs” of his lim- 
ited but strong vocabulary, yesterday, “ Hot at all 
bad fellows after all,” to-day ; and the hard-heart- 
edness and cruelty he should never get over to-day, 
in a few weeks obliterated by the unequalled fas- 
cinations of the next heroine. 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


199 


It was certainly a relief to Loveday when Dick 
went to sea, although she had. many scruples about 
seeming to sanction it. 

“ Making climbing at the risk of the neck a 
matter of duty,’’ she pleaded, “ does seem the only 
way of saving some lads from breaking their necks 
as a matter of choice. And a sailor need not abso- 
lutely be a man of war, although in these days it 
does seem too probable he will . 55 

It was so also with Madame des Ormes. Noth- 
ing soothed her so much as to sit by the little couch 
where Loveday had to spend so much of her life, 
in the plain unadorned room, where the only lus- 
trous thing was the old oaken floor, polished with 
the rubbing of generations. She said it made her 
think of Thomas a Kempis, and made luxury seem 
a folly and a vulgarity. 

The contrast of the stately gracious lady with 
her animated face and movements, and our dear 
dove-colored Loveday with her still soft face and 
voice, often charmed me. 

With most of us, Madame was, on religious 
questions, a foreigner. There were mutual suspi- 
cions, mutual reserves, mutual antagonisms conceal- 
ed or confessed, mutual ignorance of the real basis 
of one another’s daily life. Even with my father 
the sympathy did not reach beyond “ questions of 
the Second Table . 55 She recognized him fully as 
her “ neighbor , 55 and loved him as a lover of man- 
kind, but as to his ecclesiastical position she was not 
without disquiet. 


200 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


With Loveday Benbow she was at home. To 
her she opened the inmost sanctuary of her con- 
stant heart. To her she spoke as to none beside 
of her husband ; cut down by the mob of Paris, at 
the door of the prison of the village at the terrible 
sentence “ A La Force,” the terrible revolutionary 
formula corresponding to the masked sentence of 
an earlier inquisition, “ To the Secular Arm.” 

“ They dared not cry to all those innocent vic- 
tims,” she said, “ 4 A la mort.’ So terrible has 
God made crime to conscience, my friend, that the 
worst of us dare not utter the worst they can do.” 

They sat together under the great shadow of 
death, but they found it the shadow of the great 
Threshold. One day the gate would open, they 
knew, and let them in. 

To their victorious Christian faith in the unity 
of the Church, that barrier, so terribly real to most 
of us, which separates the Church visible on earth 
from that invisible in heaven, had become a mere 
“ veil,” transparent, at least translucent often here. 

The Church for them was divided not into 
Koman and Anglican, Catholic and Protestant, 
but into the wrestlers and the victors, the combat- 
ants and the crowned, the faint and few, struggling 
still through the waves of this troublesome world, 
and the glorious multitude innumerable, welcomed 
and welcoming on the other shore. 

Yet Loveday Benbow was in the whole type of 
her piety a Quaker. 

She had indeed been baptized in infancy, with 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


201 


Miss Felicity as one of her sponsors. And what- 
ever had been her convictions, her health would 
have prevented her attending the public services 
of the church. Moreover, the sacrament was not 
administered in Abbot’s Weir more than four 
times a year, and the office for the communion of 
the sick was regarded chiefly as a mild mode of 
announcing the medical sentence of death. 

Had her belief as to the sacrament been that of 
the nuns of Port Royal, she must have been prac- 
tically reduced by circumstances, as many of the 
nuns of Port Royal were by persecution, after 
their dispersion, to “ spiritual communion.’’ 

Yet the mutual attraction between her and 
Madame des Ormes was not an isolated instance 
of union of heart between Roman Catholics and 
Quakers, nor do I think the attraction was merely 
one of personal character. 

The Holy of Holies in all forms of Christianity 
is surely the same. For Friends the outer sanc- 
tuaries and courts do not exist ; for the most spir- 
itual saints in all communions they only exist out- 
side. The very multitude of dogmas and compli 
cation of rites in the Roman Church has, in many 
instances, driven her saints inward to find their 
rest in the bare simplicity of some great first prin- 
ciple. 

For Brother Lawrence, as for John Woohnan, 
alike, the true dwelling-place and “ covering ” of 
the spirit is in “ awful retiredness inward in the 
presence of God.” 


202 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


Also, both Loveday and the Marquise were 
sufferers. To both the whole world lay under the 
shadow and the shelter of the Cross of Redemp- 
tion. 

By both it was never forgotten that the only 
perfect life ever lived on earth had ended visibly 
there ; and with both it was the deepest conviction 
of the heart that this apparent end was not an 
end, but a beginning, and meant not defeat but 
victory. 

On both, moreover, had been laid a life-long 
burden, which could never more be laid aside, the 
burden of irreparable bereavement, and of irreme- 
diable pain. To both, therefore, life had made it 
plain that the Master’s Cross was not only to rescue 
from suffering, but to empower to suffer ; not to 
abolish the Cross for the disciple, but to consecrate 
the yoke into the Cross, by the simple act of will- 
ingly taking up the involuntary burden daily af- 
ter Him. Thus, neither Madame des Ormes nor 
Loveday Benbow were in the danger which besets 
the prosperous “ religious world ” of making their 
ideal of religious service a beneficent dispensing 
of alms from the throne, instead of, like the Mas- 
ter’s, a sympathetic bearing of the yoke with the 
suffering. 

“ Quserens me sedisti lassus 

for the pattern of life was as present to them as 
“ Redemisti crucem passus,” 
for its motive power. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


203 


I have always been glad that my first acquaint- 
ance with holy people was among those who 
dwelt in the shadow, rather than among those who 
dwelt in the sunshine. 

It made it clearer whence the inward sunshine 
came. It made me see a little into the depths of 
Christian life before learning more of its expan- 
sions. 

Yet there was a difference as well as a resem- 
blance between Loveday and the Marquise. It 
arose, I think, partly from their types of faith, but 
also partly from their differences of character and 
experience. 

The element of hope was far stronger in Love- 
day Benbow, — not the imperishable hope of the 
immortal life, this was equally strong in both, — but 
hope for this struggling, sinning, suffering world, — 
hope for humanity. 

In representing the life of the two symbolically, 
I would picture Madame des Ormes kneeling with 
clasped hands and upturned weeping face at the foot 
of the Cross — the Crucified still fixed there ; but 
Loveday should stand by the empty sepulchre, her 
hands outstretched to clasp the feet that were to 
“ go before into Galilee,” and on her lips and on 
her radiant face the rapturous “ Rabboni.” 

The words that seem to vibrate on the ear of 
one are, “ My God, my God , why hast thou forsaken 
me?” on the other falls the inspiring message, “ Go 
tell my brethren that lam risen and go before you” 

But the thing about Loveday Benbow that was 


204 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


characteristically u Quaker” was the listening atti- 
tude of her whole being. 

Of all the titles given to the early Church be- 
fore she received her Christian name at Antioch— 
“ brethren, saints, believers, disciples” — the one 
most applicable to Loveday would have been that 
of “ disciple.” 

You felt always that she was a “ learner,” 
only a teacher because always learning. With her 
no pupil came to drink of a stagnant water. 

The well of living water did indeed spring up 
in her heart continually — the Dropping Well from 
the Rock ; and she listened to its musical flow, 
and drank of it, and drew from it always fresh for 
every fresh pitcher presented to her, every thirsty 
heart that came to her. 

When you came to her for counsel, she did not 
supply you in a moment with some ready-made 
maxim. She herself had to consult her authority, 
was no library of old parchments, no mere record 
of decisions on other cases. It was a voice, a living 
voice, with a fresh decision for every case. There 
was indeed a Book more precious to her than gold 
and sweeter than honey ; but to her that Book was 
the utterance of One who lives, and speaks, and in- 
spires still. 

The Revelation of God through the History of 
One People, and above all of One Life, was, she 
believed inspired into the hearts of all people to be 
the food of every life by a Spirit who communes 
forever personally with the spirits of men, who 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


205 


teaches, reminds, pleads, enkindles, rebukes, ex- 
horts, comforts, — does all that is involved in the 
manifold word Paraclete. 

In this great Catholic truth, brought forward 
and pressed on the consciousness of the Church, as 
so many truths have been, by one section of it, 
often in disproportion, and with that one-sided in- 
tensity which seems the condition of the progress 
of truth among us (who having a mountain to 
climb, have to climb it for the most part by a road 
engineered in zig-zags), Loveday had been nur- 
tured by her Quaker mother. 

When first I remember her she must have been 
still young, scarcely twenty. To us she never 
seemed either young or old. In the external sense 
youth, with its vigor and eager impulse, was never 
hers. In its deepest sense youth was hers, with 
all its freshness and glow of hope always. Scarcely 
twenty, yet her life as to personal incident and 
action was already finished. 

Mother’s love for her had early passed into the 
heavens; father’s love — protective, self-denying, 
provident, generous — she had never known. 
From earliest childhood she had seen her mother 
pining, fading, dying under her father’s neglect 
aud extravagance. The very love which made 
her quick to see and wise to soften her mother’s 
sufferings, rendered her keen to see and quick to 
hate her father’s selfishness. 

Terrible are the lives thus poisoned at the 
fountain, for which the instinctive affections which 


206 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


are at the root of all love, are at war with the moral 
principles which are at the root of all right ; for 
which the alternative lies between “calling evil 
good,” and not being able in the inmost heart to 
“give honor where honor is most due.” 

Terrible when the great sacred parable of hu- 
man relationships is reversed and falsified, when the 
stone is given to the children for bread, and the 
poisonous serpent laid in the child’s bosom by the 
very hand that should have guarded from it. In 
such a chaos there is no resource but one, to look up 
from the broken mirror to the unbroken light it 
should have reflected, from the love which has 
failed to the eternal love, which is fatherly and 
motherly at once, and never fails. 

And this Loveday Benbow did. 

The solitude in which her mother’s death left 
her was, for heart, and mind, and spirit, for all that 
makes “me,” as absolute as that of Moses on Sinai. 
Below was Miss Felicity worshipping her idol, 
which she had robbed herself of gold, and jewels, 
or such equivalents as she possessed, and every pre- 
cious thing, to make what it was ; happy once more 
to be sole priestess at its shrine. 

To little Loveday it was no shrine. The ut- 
most which her patient and injured mother had 
been able in dying to leave her was a legacy of 
reverent pity, reverence for the unfulfilled rela- 
tionship, pity for the lost man. 

And in this solitude came to her the voice of 
God. Direct, through no mediating mortal lips. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


207 


but immediate from spirit to spirit, piercing through 
all the weeping and the wailing of the people, that 
voice had reached her; and direct, by no tender 
human links, except the humanity of God made 
man, by no gentle steps of love ascending softly 
from higher to highest, her spirit darted with an 
arrow’s flight to Him. She felt Him always near- 
est, His voice the clearest to hear, the easiest to un- 
derstand, the dearest to follow, His love not only 
the sublime crown and climax of all, but the most 
familiar and homelike of all ; what He cared for, 
her closest care ; what He hated, her most natural 
indignation. 

For to her the voice of God was no mere in- 
articulate music, but a living voice whose “ Woe 
unto you ” was as real and as needed as its “ Gome 
unto me ” — “ Woe unto you ” to the oppressor un- 
der any disguise, — “ Come unto Me ” for the weary 
and heavy laden of every color. 

Well for her that her love for God was so true, 
that like all true love it brought its burden as well 
as its joy. She did not perplex herself with theories 
about anthropomorphism. She believed in the 
possibility of the Incarnation with all its attendant 
possibilities, and in the fact of the Incarnation with 
all its results. 

That God should be “grieved at His heart” to 
her meant, at all events, something quite real, some- 
thing at which those who loved Him must be griev- 
ed at heart too. 

That God should be afflicted with the afflictions 


208 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of Israel of old meant not that He had been roused 
from the calm of the serene upper heavens to a 
transitory exceptional pity, but that He pitied all 
the creatures He had made, and was afflicted with 
their afflictions always. 

And the wronged people of the time, her 
mother had taught her, were the “ black mankind ” 
whom the English people in the West Indies and 
in America stole, and bought, and sold, and held in 
cruel bondage, whom the Quaker Society, alone of 
all sections of the Christian Church, had voluntarily 
emancipated and refused to hold in bondage, and 
were laboring to set free throughout the world. 

There was something surely in the “ listening,’’ 
the stillness, the “ waiting,” on which fell clear as 
a church bell when the whole church was asleep and 
heard nothing, the convictiou that to buy, and sell, 
and hold in bondage “ black mankind” was a sin. 

During her long nights of weariness and days of 
pain her spirit, that is she herself, had suffered 
with the suffering people. She had identified her- 
self with them as Kosciusko with his Poland, or 
Hofer with his Tyrol, or the most loyal Yendean 
with the fallen race of St. Louis. She had made 
that wronged people her people, as truly as she be- 
lieved her God their God. 

Hot with a blind enthusiasm. She loved too 
much to idealize. She longed to help too much to 
suffer herself to be deceived as to what help was 
needed. That the degradation was also moral 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 209 

that the chains bound round them were also chains 
of sin, only made her pity more intense. 

Taking them at their worst, stupid, childish, 
helpless, brutalized, idle, vulgar, as their hardest 
enemies could picture them, at their worst, and be- 
cause of the worst oppression had made them, her 
heart glowed towards them with indignant pity and 
agonizing love. 

To me, through her inspiration, that great anti- 
slavery conflict became like one of Homer’s battles, 
or the story of the Peninsular War, or of Waterloo, 
as I have heard them from those who fought there. 
Pennsylvania and New England, where John Wool- 
man went on his weary foot-pilgrimages of com- 
passion to rouse the “ Society ” to the wrongs 
of the slaves, were to me romantic and sacred names. 
Those quaint old volumes of Quaker literature 
which she loved to read, with their old-fashioned 
printing and their more old-fashioned wording 
and thinking, conscientiously, or unconsciously, 
plain to the utmost limit of plainness, as to 
the picturesque and the aesthetic, even now make 
my heart throb like some new message from a dear 
voice of the many now out of sight and hearing to 
me. As Amice Glanvil used to say, “ if the slaves 
had been white, or olive, or any artistic color, and 
instead of woolly hair had rejoiced in raven tresses” 
or u radiant masses of gold,” the world would have 
awakened up earlier to their wrongs. But Loveday 
took them at the worst, thick-lipped, woolly-haired, 
ungraceful, and loved them better for their very 
14 


210 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ugliness, as a mother her ugly child. In her heart, 
Amice declared, Loveday called them not black, hut 
bronze , a kind of duller gold. 

Too often, indeed, the picturesque of things seen 
and temporal may blind us to the true poetic of the 
things unseen and eternal. 

The whole history of that great wrong was 
vivid and distinct to Loveday as her own. 

“ How nearly,” she used to say, u the mon- 
strous evil of modern slavery had, at the very be- 
ginning, been crushed in the germ ; how irresistibly 
and swiftly, once allowed to live, it had grown ! ” 

For centuries the Christian Church had protest- 
ed against slavery, had fought against it. For two 
centuries she had vanquished it, and driven it from 
every realm where she had sway. First of the 
nations, Ireland, on this point twice in this long 
campaign, wisest of all by virtue of the wisdom of 
the warm heart, had renounced this wrong. In 
1172 her clergy forbid all traffic in human beings, 
and accomplished the emancipation of those who 
had been sold into bondage, chiefly English men 
and women, kidnapped and shipped from Bristol. 

In France the burden of wrong had rested on 
the heart of her king, and in 1315, Louis X. enfran- 
chised all crown serfs, declaring that “ slavery was 
contrary to nature, which intended that all men 
should be by birth free and equal.” 

And so for two centuries the cry of the bonds- 
man had ceased to go up to heaven from Christen- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


211 


dom, at least for any of the children of the 
Church. 

That victory might have seemed won for ever. 
But, alas ! the banner under which it was won was 
too narrow. And, moreover, the religious wars of 
the Cross checked the progress of emancipation. 
It was held unlawful for any Christian to enslave 
his brethren ; but the followers of Mohammed were 
not “ brethren,” they were aliens, enemies of God 
and man, and accordingly numbers of Saracens 
were sold into bondage without remorse. For 
broad as the field of Christendom is, humanity is 
broader. The Church had nobly thrown her shield 
over all her children down to the meanest. She 
had freed all Christendom from slavery. She had 
yet to learn that the pity and the justice of God 
reach further than the most Catholic Church that 
has learned to believe in them, and that creation 
is an earlier claim on His love than baptism. 

In this mediaeval limitation of emancipation, 
noble as mediaeval Christian emancipation was, 
lay the little rift which was again to spoil all its 
music. 

Through this one weak place came in, slowly at 
first, and then in overwhelming force, the whole 
monstrous iniquity of modern slavery, worse than 
ancient, by all the Christian pity it had to stifle, 
by the “ little grain of conscience ” which “ made 
it sour.” 

The Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru 
caused the desolation of two countries. The native 


212 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


races of America were crushed beneath the w T eight 
of forced labor, and the native races of Africa were 
torn from their homes to supply their places. Not 
without individual protest. Again and again the 
merciful heart, always heating in the Church, be- 
neath all slumber, and all disguises, rose against 
this great wickedness. 

Cardinal Ximenes refused ( even at the instance 
of Las Casas, in his mistaken hope of saving the 
Indians) to sanction the African slave-trade. 

Charles Y. abolished slavery throughout his 
dominions. The Dominicans condemned it, in 
contradiction to the Franciscans, and Leo X., 
when the contending orders brought the question 
before him, gave decision on the broadest issues. 
“ Not the Christian religion only,” he said, “ but 
Nature herself protested against a state of slavery.” 

On two other sovereigns this great wrong 
weighed heavily — Louis XIII. of France, and 
Elizabeth of England. 

The conscience of Christendom on the heights, 
above the temptation, was clear. But great tor- 
rents of wrong are not stemmed by voices from 
the heights, but by humble men on the levels, 
pulling against the stream, or laboriously building 
dykes of common earth, to turn its course. 

If kings are to. serve a kingdom, it can only be 
by coming down to serve. And Elizabeth and 
Louis XIII. did not come down and serve ; they 
stood on the heights and protested. And the thing 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


213 


against which they protested paused for a moment 
and then went on. 

Self-interest proved stronger than monarchs 
and Popes. Slavery rooted itself North and South 
through all the continent of America. 

Louis was “ uneasy ” at having to sign an edict 
consigning all Africans who came to his colonies to 
slavery. 

Elizabeth had a “religious scruple;” and send- 
ing for Sir John Hawkins, the founder of the 
English slave-trade, expressed her horror at Afri- 
cans being taken from their country “ without their 
free consent.” 

To Louis XIII., for the first time probably, the 
religious argument was used. It was suggested 
that slavery would be an effective means of propa- 
gating the Gospel among those benighted Africans. 
And the edict was signed. 

To Queen Elizabeth Sir John Hawkins prom- 
ised obedience ; a promise which he kept by kid- 
napping as many natives as he could from the 
African coast on his next voyage. 

Something stronger than “ religious scruples” 
and “ uneasiness” is needed to combat such evils. 

The Puritan forefathers of Massachusetts also 
protested. 

In the first instance, fresh from English political 
freedom, and their own struggles for religious liber- 
ty, they did more than protest. They threw two 
masters of slave ships into prison, and threatened all 
future kidnappers with death. 


214 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


In Rhode Island (1527) Roger Williams, the 
founder, declared all negro servants free after ten 
years of service. 

Yet self-interest and love of money prevailed. 
The evil crept on. By the middle of the seven- 
teenth century every State south of Rhode Island 
was slave-holding ; and even the Quakers of Penn- 
sylvania were involved both in the traffic and the 
property. 

The mediaeval day of emancipation was dying 
fast, and thick night was coming once more over 
the nations. The last voices of the nightfall have 
their especial interest as well as the first voices of 
the dawn. 

Of these Baxter and George Fox are among the 
last solitary protests. 

The last cry of warning from any body of men 
comes in 1688 from a little community of German 
Quakers, driven from Kreishiem in the Palatinate 
to Pennsylvania. Coming, as they believed, to a 
land of light and freedom, they break into a cry of 
indignant astonishment at finding “ black brethren” 
held in bondage there by Friends. 

“ Ah, do consider well this thing,” they wrote 
to the Monthly Meeting at Philadelphia, “ you who 
do it, if you would be done unto in this manner. 
And if it is done according to Christianity, pray 
what thing in the world can be done worse unto us, 
than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us 
for slaves into strange countries, especially husbands 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


215 


from their wives and children ? If this is done well , 
what shall we say is done ill ? ” 

Clear and strong, the protest of these linmhle, 
single-hearted men rings out through the growing 
darkness ; and then falls the silence of night. The 
chains of darkness are riveted on America north and 
south, on the bodies of black mankind, and on the 
souls of the white. 

Yet even through the night the silence is not 
unbroken. There are voices mild and slumbrous 
as of those who mutter in sleep, or isolated and 
piercing as of the watchers who dwell in the pres- 
ence of Him who neither slumbereth nor sleepeth. 

In 1727, a London Quarterly Quaker meeting, 
“ uneasy,” like Louis XIII., resolved, that the im- 
porting of negroes from their native country by 
Friends is “ not a commendable nor allowed prac- 
tice,” and is therefore censured. And in America 
similar mild rebukes were repeated from time to 
time. But however uneasy the censure may have 
made those it concerned, the uncommendable 
practice went on. 

Until at last began what Loveday used to call 
the first voices of the dawn, the morning spread 
upon the mountains, which she was persuaded 
should never again die into darkness. 

Solitary, scattered, too far apart, and too feeble 
to be echoes of each other ; each separate voice 
called forth in response to the Yoice of the Shep- 
herd ; each separate witness, concerned not to “ de- 


216 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


liver his own soul,” but to deliver the oppressed 
whose burden lay upon him. 

At last in a few human hearts a love to God and 
man had sprung up as determined and active as the 
love of gain in the oppressors. 

Self-love had encountered a love of man as real 
as itself, and when real always stronger, as God is 
stronger than the world. 

In Long Island, William Burling, true to the 
last to the generous sympathies of his youth, “ ab 
horring slavery from his early youth ; ” in Philadel- 
phia, the merchant, sober Ralph Sandiford, refus- 
ing to accept pecuniary aid from any who held 
slaves ; and Benjamin Lay, scarcely four feet high, 
with his long white beard, and stoical life, driven 
nearly to madness by the scenes he had witnessed 
among the negroes in Barbadoes. 

And then, no longer solitary, but leading on a 
chorus which was swelling daily, Anthony Benezet 
and John Woolman. 

It was good, Loveday thought, to observe that 
each of these to whom it was given first to wake at 
the Master’s call, and to carry it on to others, and 
so to wake the Church, had been listening for His 
voice, were men who had already risen above the 
common idolatry of the age, who having refused 
to bow the knee to Mammon, had thus learned to 
say Ho to the prevailing sin around them, before 
they said Yes to this high especial call. 

It was no sin, she said, to buy and sell in the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 217 

market-place, but it was not in the market-place 
that the heavenly voices sounded clearest. 

Anthony Benezet, coming of a race trained for 
generations to endurance, son of a father exiled by 
the revocation of the edict of Hantz (one of the 
many heroes France had driven from her,) hold- 
ing that the noblest service is rendered with the 
noblest part of us, that in God’s kingdom the high- 
est offices are those which serve men directly 
instead of paying others to serve, chose the career 
of a teacher in Philadelphia, rather than that of a 
merchant. 

Of silver and gold having none, better gifts 
were given him ; impotent hearts leaped at his 
word to action. 

His tract on the history of Guinea furnished - 
Clarkson with material for his Essay on the Slave- 
trade, and so gave the impulse to the English abo- 
lition movement. 

His pupil, William Dillwyn, formed the link 
between the American abolitionists and the English. 

But most of all Loveday delighted in some 
manuscript fragments which she possessed from the 
journals of John Woolman, of Hew Jersey, a 
“ Minister among Friends,” who had died at York 
in 1772. 

“ From what I had heard and read,” he wrote, 

“ I believed there had been, in past ages, people 
who walked in uprightness before God, in a degree 
exceeding any that I knew or heard of now living. 
And the apprehension of there being less steadiness 


218 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


and firmness among people of this age than in past 
ages often troubled me while I was a child.” 

There Loveday used to say was the' little well- 
spring on the hills from which all the river flowed. 

John Wool man had learnt that in the Church 
of God there is no irrevocable Golden Age in the 
past. The child in the new colony in the new 
continent of the far West was as near the source of 
“uprightness,” of truth, theological and practical, 
as the children in the old country in the far East, 
on whom Divine hands were laid eighteen centuries 
ago ; as the young man whose name was Paul, at 
whose feet the murderers of the first martyr laid 
their clothes, on whose dazzled eyes broke the light 
brighter than the Syrian sun, on whose ears fell 
the transforming “ Why persecutest thou Me % ” 

The dragons are ever springing anew from the 
earth, and the heroes are ever needed to encounter 
them. 

The Church is a living body, as her Lord is 
living, not a sculptured copy of more glorious sculp- 
ture of olden days. 

The good Shepherd leads, the good Spirit in- 
spires, now as of old. 

Around John Woolman doubtless were count- 
less religious men, admirers of prophets, apostles, 
and martyrs, and all the dragon-slayers of old, 
quietly tolerating the dragon of their own days, and 
even persuading themselves that he was a necessary 
beast of burden, without whom the soil by which 
they lived could not be tilled. To John Woolman, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


219 


“ whose concern it was to attend, with singleness 
of heart, to the voice of the true Shepherd, and to 
he so supported as to remain unmoved at the faces 
of men,” he appeared in his true form, as the de- 
stroyer of moral and spiritual life, — not to be tole- 
rated for an instant, whether the fields could be 
tilled and the owners live without him or not. 

To the sober New Englander the first encounter 
came in prosaic New England shape. 

He was asked to write a will bequeathing black 
mankind as property. 

u As writing was a profitable employ, and as of- 
fending sober people was disagreeable to my incli- 
nation, I was straitened in my mind, but as I looked 
to the Lord He inclined my heart to His testimony ; 
and I told the man that I believed the practice of 
continuing slavery to this people was not right, and 
that I had a scruple in my mind against doing 
writings of that kind ; that though many in our 
society kept them as slaves, still I was not easy to 
be concerned in it. I spoke to him in the fear of 
the Lord, and he made no reply to what I said, but 
went away ; he also had some concerns in the prac- 
tice, and I thought he was displeased with me. 

u In this case I had a fresh confirmation, that 
acting contrary to present outward interest from a 
motive of Divine love, and in regard to truth and 
righteousness, opens the way to a treasure better 
than silver, and to a friendship exceeding the 
friendship of men.” 

He was not lifted above the level of his neigh- 


220 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


bors. To him sober accumulation of silver would 
have been pleasant ; and to lose at once silver and 
approbation was not pleasant ; but truth and right- 
eousness and the friendship of God were better, 
and he chose them. 

The sacrifice required of him was not great, a 
few silver coins, — the sullen silence of a neighbor. 
But the principle would have led to any sacrifice. 
The faithfulness which enabled him to refuse the 
shillings would have strengthened him to choose 
the stake. 

His testimony began in 1759. 

The Hand whose slightest indication he follow- 
ed led him on. His mind being “ in awful retired- 
ness inward to the Lord,” the things which grieve 
the Merciful One became intolerable to him. 

He could not bear in his journeys as a minister, 
to “ eat, drink, and lodge free cost ” with those who 
lived in ease on the hard labor of their slaves ; he 
could not bear to ride at ease, while the oppressed 
were toiling, “ hardly used,” for those who welcom- 
ed him. 

Often weakly, and with a weary body, he trav- 
elled on foot from place to place to bear his testi- 
mony. 

“ Though travelling thus on foot was weari- 
some to his body, it was agreeable to his state of 
mind,” while his spirit was “ covered with sorrow 
and heaviness,” on account of “ friends living in fat- 
ness on the labor of the poor oppressed negroes.” 

Wearied with the way, like the Master, he seem- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 221 

ed thus nearer Him and nearer those on whom the 
burden was laid heavily. 

In these lonely long walks and “ in this state 
of humiliation, the sufferings of Christ and His 
tasting death for ever}^ man, and the travels and 
sufferings of the primitive Christians were livingly 
revived ” in him. 

His spirit grew freer under the yoke, and he 
“ expatiated ” at one of the quarterly meetings “ on 
the tenderness and loving kindness of the Apostles, 
as shown in labors, perils, and sufferings towards 
the poor Gentiles,” and contrasted with “ this the 
treatment which those Gentiles the negroes receiv- 
ed at their hands,” and “ the power of truth came 
over those present, and his mind was united to a ten- 
der-hearted people in those parts.” 

Many journeys he made from house to house, 
earnestly warning the slave-owner against his sin. 

In 1772 he came on a religious visit to Eng- 
land, and laid before the quarterly meeting at York 
the wrongs of this oppressed people. 

And then soon afterwards he died. 

| But in 1774 the Quakers of Pennsylvania and 
Hew Jersey disowned any of their members con- 
cerned in the slave-trade ; and in 1776 they dis- 
owned any who refused to emancipate their slaves. 

Twelve years afterwards not a slave was held 
by any member of the Society of Friends. 

But these were dead. Who held the banner 
and carried on the fight now ? 


222 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


It was a way of Loveday’s that she never spoke 
of “ the dead.” 

Death, she taught us, was not a permanent con- 
dition, hut a momentary transition, a commending 
of the spirit, not for the first time nor the last, into 
the hands of God. 

“ From the hand of God to the hand of God.” 
They lived by the hand of God. They live in his 
protecting, moulding, perfecting hands forever. 

“ These all died in faith,” she said, “ not having 
obtained the promises: they embraced them in 
weakness and in darkness afar off. Do you think 
they will not embrace them now, when they are in 
the light, and in fulness of strength, when the ful- 
filment comes near, as it is coming every day ? ” 

She could never endure a word which seemed 
to give the visible precedence over the invisible 
just made perfect. 

“We shall not prevent ( precede ) them that are 
asleep,” she would say. “ They went before, and 
they shall be first.” 

“ But Loveday,” I said one day, “ these have 
overcome, and the battle goes on ; you say the great 
thing for us is to find out the dragons and the 
heroes now.” 

“ Yes,” she said. “ It is because God is not the 
God of the dead, because the prophets are living 
now, that it is such empty work to build their sep- 
ulchres. They are not caring for their sepulchres, 
but for the issue of the battle in which they shared.” 

“ But how shall we find out the heroes and the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


223 


dragons ? ” I asked, thinking that the Frenchmen 
who destroyed the Bastile, in whose cause (partly) 
I had worn the foolscap, had not exactly proved 
the right heroes, and hoping that Granville Sharpe 
would not similarly fail. 

“ By fighting your own little bit of the battle 
well under the Captain’s eye ; by pulling against 
the stream of little temptations,” she said. “It 
was by refusing the ill-earned shillings John Wool- 
man was made ready to embrace the emancipation 
of a race. In the intervals of the battle, if they 
are any, by keeping our armor bright, and listen- 
ing for the Master’s word of command, and being 
ready to obey it at all costs. Above all by listen- 
ing. He can direct us through any voice , if we 
are awake and listening. John Woolman was 
guided into his right path by a temptation to for- 
sake it ; Granville Sharpe by an appeal to his kind- 
ness from a poor bruised and runaway slave, Jona- 
than Strong ; Thomas Clarkson by an invitation to 
write a prize essay; William Wilberforce, by an 
appeal from Thomas Clarkson. But neither of 
them would have followed the call,” said Loveday, 
“ unless they had been listening for the Yoice, and 
had cared before all things in the world to follow it.” 




CHAPTER XIII. 



T was Hew Year’s Eve; the eve of the 
birthday of the new century. 

It had been proposed that the most in- 
timate members of our circle should wel- 
'come it in together in our house. But this fell to 
the ground. 

Madame des Ormes could not trust herself to 
be in company on that evening. The old century 
had slain and buried too much. Its last day would 
to her but be a u jour des morts.” She would keep 
the vigil alone ; and her Claire would, she hoped, 
sleep it in, and see the new century first in the 
light of dawn. Her poor child’s face ought to be 
towards the dawn ; but scarcely her own. 

Miss Eelicity preferred being under the same 
roof with her poor brother, though to him years or 
centuries could bring but little change. 

Loveday was not an observer of days and 
months, and times, and years. To her every morn- 
ing brought its new mercies, and began a new life. 
She sat beside the river which makes glad the city 
of God ; and the river of time flowed by her less 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


225 


heeded. It came from the exhaustless clouds and 
flowed to the boundless seas, and was flowing al- 
ways. There were breaks in it, rapids, and calms, 
but they were not affected by the commencement 
of what we call centuries. Days and nights were 
realities; and mankind had its days and nights, 
but they did not date from such artificial barriers. 
History and life did not, for her, divide themselves 
in that way. 

So our Hew Year’s gathering was reduced to 
our own family and my uncle Fyford. Dick was 
far away in the Mediterranean, blockading Malta, 
and defending indefensible Haples; his brief let- 
ters, when he wrote, full of nothing but Nelson. 

Mrs. Danescombe had desired to have intro- 
duced the new century in state with the amber 
damask uncovered, in the drawing-room, but my 
father for once overruled her decision, and we met 
it gathered around the wood fire in the old Stone 
parfor. 

“Yesterday,” said my uncle, “the king will 
have closed the session ; in three weeks the Irish 
members will be flocking to London, and we shall 
have the first United Imperial Parliament.” 

“ Scarcely united, I am afraid,” said my father. 
“ The old Irish Parliament died hard.” 

“ Everything in Ireland dies hard,” retorted my 
uncle. “Dying and massacring is their strong 
point. Seventy thousand in the last rebellion, ’98. 
If they could only live and let live, it would be 
another thing.” 

i5 


226 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


“Well,” said my father, “in one good thing 
they are strong — they are against the slave-trade 
to a man.” 

“ Poor creatures,” said my uncle, “ they never 
had any slaves. Property of any kind is not at all 
events their strong point, and it is easy enough to 
be generous with other people’s.” 

“You are right as to the 'slaves, Richard,” re- 
plied my father rather warmly. “ They have never 
had any slaves since the Irish clergy denounced 
the Bristol slave-trade in 1172. I should like to 
see our clergy follow their example now.” 

“ Pray, Mr. Danescombe,” said my stepmother, 
“let politics be banished this one evening. Let 
us speak of something more suitable to the occa 
sion.” 

“ What would you have, Euphrasia ? ” he re- 
plied smiling. “Politics are only the gossip of 
centuries. I wish Dick was here,” he added. 
You have a letter from him, Piers. Did he say 
anything about himself? ” 

“ Nothing about himself,” said Piers, “scarcely 
anything about anybody but Nelson.” 

The “scarcely” meant Amice Glanvil, with 
whom at the moment our cousin was vehemently 
in love ; “ this time,” he said, “no boy’s fancy, 
but serioils, a matter of life and death ! ” 

“ I wonder if the lad says true,” said my father. 
“ I should not wonder. The judgment of the peo- 
ple who work under a man, especially that of the 
young, often squares more with the decision of the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


227 


centuries, than the judgment in high places. 
Pity he should be defending that abominable 
Neapolitan tyranny ! ” 

“ There is something in the letter about the ex- 
ecution of a Neapolitan admiral,” said Piers, “ and 
the corpse rising out of the sea and following the 
ships upright. It was horribly like the Day of 
Judgment, Dick says, and the poor fellow was 
called a patriot.” 

“ Poor Caraccioli ! ” replied my father. “ It 
was a sad business. The noblest helping to sustain 
the vilest. No wonder the sailors shuddered.” 

“ It was only the weight of the stones attached 
to the feet, which caused it,” said my uncle, dryly. 

“ Yery probably,” replied my father. “I sup- 
pose the Day of Judgment will be brought about 
by some weight proving too heavy at last. Every- 
thing must sink or float by some balancing of 
weights, — even Neapolitan courts. The wretched 
thing is to keep up things that ought to sink, by 
weights unfairly attached, the weight of Nelson’s 
nobleness and England’s freedom, for instance, at- 
tached to a defunct tyranny, making it float after 
living men with a ghastly semblance of life.” 

We were drifting into politics again. 

“At all events,” responded my uncle, “I sup- 
pose you are not too cosmopolitan to rejoice in the 
capture of Malta.” 

“ One defunct thing safely buried, at all events, 
that old order of the Knights,” said my father. 
“ Yet that had a grand life and meaning in it once.” 


228 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


“ Your old admiration, the French republic, has 
life enough in it, at all events,” said my uncle. 
“ As to meaning, I cannot say. Not exactly the 
same as it began with, certainly. War and victo- 
ries on all sides. In Italy, Marengo ; in Bavaria, 
Hohenlinden on the 2d, a month since. The Czar 
an adorer of the new Alexander — Napoleon Bona- 
parte. And even as to your blacks, the Convention 
decrees emancipation in 1794, and their ships ravage 
your Free Black Colony in Sierra Leone the same 
year. What French liberty means, is not so plain.” 

“ It means the First Consul ! ” said my father, 
very sadly. “ Bichard, you are a little hard on me. 
How could I help hoping ? Every one hoped twen 
ty years since. Beligious men hoped ; and even 
scepticism hoped. Bousseau, and Tom Paine him- 
self, only wanted to destroy the old beliefs, not for 
the sake of destroying, but because they fancied 
they had a new panacea for humanity. For once 
the toiling, silent multitudes — the multitudes the 
Master had compassion on, Bichard, made them- 
selves heard, and not having learned letters, they 
spoke in whirlwinds. And the first breath of the 
whirlwind swept away the Bastile, and seemed to 
let in a flood of light, and make a world of room 
for men to think, and form, and reform in. No one 
thought whirlwinds would build. W e only thought 
they would clear the ground for the builders. But 
so far, in France at least, the builders have not come, 
and the whirlwind having destroyed the Bastiles, 
whirls round the dust of their ruins, on and on, 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


229 


blinding men’s eyes and stifling their breath. In 
England, please God, we will begin with building, 
not with destroying. It makes a very irregular edi- 
fice, but at least it does not make a world of ruin. 
The difficult thing now, Bichard,” he concluded, 
with a tremor in his voice, “ is not to repent, but 
to hope. You are a teacher of Christianity. Teach 
us to hope.” 

“It is five minutes to twelve!” interposed 
Mrs. Danescombe. 

We had made no plan of greeting the coming 
century. But silence fell on us all. My father 
w’ent to the window and opened it. We stood near 
it with hushed breath, hand in hand, mine in Piers’ 
and father’s. I knew Beuben Pengelly and the 
Methodists were watching in the New Year to- 
gether; and at the old house across the market- 
place Madame des Ormes, and Claire, and Loveday 
were keeping vigil. The still air seemed palpitat- 
ing with prayer. And clear and deep at last fell 
the twelve midnight beats of the fine silvery old 
church bell. It was not tolling in its first new cen- 
tury ! 

And then, through the still, frosty night, the 
chimes rang out in their slow, lingering music the 
Old Hundredth Psalm. 

We all stood still until the last vibration died 
away along the empty, unlighted, silent streets. 

“ The old sacred voice is teaching us to hope ! ” 
said my father at last. “ ‘ Praise God ’ — there is 
no surer path to hope.” And then in a lower voic ) 


230 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


lie added, as if to himself, “ 6 all creatures here be- 
low? Yes, we are only below ! The whirlwind 
and darkness are only below. ‘ Praise Him above, 
ye heavenly host.’ They are doing it. They have 
learned the way to hope, the only way. Richard,” 
he said, grasping my uncle’s hand, “ let us have a 
prayer, and part.” 

My uncle looked perplexed. Family prayer 
even was not then a common institution, extempore 
prayer was an idea that would never have occurred 
to him, and the Liturgy itself was scarcely conceiv- 
able to him, except as a whole, in its ordered se- 
quence. And no prayer-book was at hand to read 
out of. Moreover, there was something curious in 
kneeling except in a pew or at a bedside. Yet, he 
did not like to decline. He hesitated a little, and 
then did about the best thing that could have been 
done. 

We all knelt at the long, low window-seat, the 
stars twinkling on us through the frosty air, and 
the little star in Loveday Benbow’s window and in 
Madame’s shining across the market-place ; and in 
a low voice my uncle said, “ Let us pray for the 
whole state of Christ's church militant here on 
earth?' 

So we entered the new century, as I trust, in 
communion with the whole church, suffering and 
battling in this transitory life, and departed from 
it to the King in his heavenly kingdom ; always 
militant here, and always militant in hope. 



CHAPTER XIY. 



HE next morning I remember feeling it 
almost strange how unchanged the world 
looked. The sun dawned, not on a new 
century, but simply on a new day. 

But then, how much a new day means ! A new 
morning and evening, the only eras nature recog- 
nizes, illuminating the heavens for their birth and 
close, with unwearied varieties of festive ceremonial, 
of gladness and of tender solemnity. 

Daily life began again, grouped not around cen- 
turies, but around its own endlessly varying work 
and interests. 

Although a century had begun, I could not 
forget the important event immediately before me 
and Piers ; for it was settled at last that Piers and 
I were to pay the long-promised visit to our cousins 
the Crichtons at Clapham. 

A journey to London was not indeed as for- 
midable a thing as fifty years before. It could be 
accomplished, travelling early and late, in three 
days. My father had been to London six times, 
Mrs. Danescombe once. There were at least twenty 


232 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


people in Abbot’s Weir who had spent some days, 
at one time of their life or another, in the great 
city. The chief mantua-maker, if she had not 
achieved the journey herself, procured her fashions 
from a friend in the neighboring large town, who 
went annually. Still it was distinctly an event. 

Preparations were made for it about on the 
same scale as in these days for a voyage by the 
overland route. It was still a popular belief 
among us that the denizens of the metropolis 
were, in the lower strata, a people of preternatural 
cunning and acuteness, against whose machinations 
inexperienced young persons should be carefully 
warned ; and among the higher classes, endowed 
with a preternatural perfection of good manners of 
which provincial young persons were to stand in 
awe. 

People warned you, congratulated you, gave 
you solemn auguries, or anxious good wishes, ac 
cording to their experience and disposition, as at 
the beginning of a new stage of your existence. 

Madame Glanvil, indeed, who prided herself 
on a certain fine old county flavor, and would have 
held it a degradation to tone down even a certain 
rough provincialism of accent, to the common 
smoothness of people who were “ no better known 
in one county than in another,” by no means 
shared this sentiment. 

I had rather a shrinking from her rough hand- 
ling of the subject. But that day I had to encoun- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


233 


ter her; my first New Year’s greeting being prom- 
ised to Amice. 

Madame Glanvil received me with her most 
critical air. 

“ Don’t bring back any fine London airs to me,” 
she said, sitting in her high-backed chair, and pinch- 
ing me mentally betwen her fingers, like the pinch 
of snuff she was taking, “or come mincing your 
words small like the stones in those new roads of 
Mr. Mac Adam’s, till there’s no telling what they are 
or where they come from. Townsfolks are towns- 
folks, and nothing better, whether the town is where 
the palaces and Parliament Houses happen to be, 
or any other. And you Danescombes are better 
than that, at least on one side. And above all,” she 
added, her manner changing from rough play to 
sharp and serious warning, and her eyes giving out 
one of their stormy steely flashes, “ don’t bring home 
any new-fangled nonsense of religion or philan- 
thropy. I know where you are going well enough, 
and the kind of cant they talk at Clapham ; calling 
themselves ‘ poor sinners’ and ‘worms of the dust,’ 
and all the time fancying they can see everybody’s 
duties and set everybody right all the world over ! 
That they call c saving faith.’ Believing any wick- 
ed lies against their own countrymen and country- 
women, and crying and sighing over any lazy runa- 
way of a black that comes whining to them ! And 
that they call philanthropy. All I know is such reli- 
gion and such philanthropy don’t set foot in Court 
while the breath is in my body. And that, Bride 


234 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Danescombe, I hope you quite understand. Meth- 
odists there will be, I suppose, as long as there are 
poor ignorant fools to listen to them, and as far as 
I see, among such they do no great harm. It keeps 
them from worse, as we set fire to the furze when it 
grows too wild. And I allow they are better than 
Jacobins. But Methodists in Mufti, Methodists 
turned parsons, or parsons turned Methodists, and 
worse than all, Methodists turned philanthropists, 
that is Jacobins and Methodists in one, I never can 
and will never abide. And that is what they are at 
Clapham. I would as soon send Amice to Paris, to 
learn religion from the French convention. But 
there’s your father’s weak point, and he must tak$ 
the consequences. Only you understand, I mean 
what I say. Forewarned is forearmed.” 

Then, half amused at the warmth she had work- 
ed herself into, and pleased to see me unmoved, as 
I always was when her assaults in any way touched 
my father, she added, “ Poor little maid, you stand 
fire pretty well. Come with me, and I will show 
you something, I’ll be bound you care for more 
than Methodism or philanthropy, black or white.” 
And she walked before me up the old oak staircase 
into her own bedroom, and there, drawing out 
from a Japan cabinet sundry treasures of lace and 
ancient jewelry, she presented me with a piece of 
choice old English point, and with a pendant of 
amethyst. 

I should greatly have liked not to take them. 
They seemed to me missiles thrown at Granville 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


235 


Sharpe, Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Wilberforce, and all the 
Clapham names I delighted to honor. 

But Amice clasped the jewel round my neck. 

“ I know you would like to throw them at Gran- 
ny’s feet,” she murmured, “ or to subscribe them 
to an anti-slavery society. But one would be melo- 
dramatic, and the other dishonest. So submit.” 

And I submitted. 

Amice and I walked back through the woods 
to Abbot’s 'Weir. 

The air was clear and frosty ; the river beside 
which our path wound mingled its tinkling icicles 
with the rush of its many waters over the rocks. 

I like a day such as this,” Amice said. “ There 
seems room in the world to breathe. The sky 
seems so boundless and yet so near, and one’s own 
body, like the river, so strong and free ; not a bur- 
den, but a power. But 1 am not a power ! ” she 
added suddenly, “ not a river, indeed, nor a rock to 
stop it, only a pebble. All women are no more 
than that.” 

“ Nothing is really a power,” I said, “ except in 
its own place.” 

“ Yes, that is your religion,” she said ; “ God 
in everything. Do you know, Bride, I have been 
puzzling out church histories and philosophies, and 
all kinds of books, in my grandfather’s library. 
Books are the only world in which I am free — free 
to think : and that is why I care about them. If 
Piers could not make and work, he would under- 
stand what books are better. By-and-by he will ; 


23G 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


and I have come to the conclusion there are only 
two religions — Pantheism and Dualism. Poly- 
theism is only the popular side of Pantheism.” 

“Among the heathen, you mean,” I suggested. 

“ Not at all,” she replied. “We may call our- 
selves what we like, but you are a Pantheist and 
I am a Dualist. You believe in one power — good ; 
and I in two — good and evil.” 

“ Of course I believe there is the devil, Amice,” 
I said. 

“ You think you do,” she said, “but you think 
of him as of Attila, the scourge of God ; vanquish- 
ed and swept over by the tide of victory ages ago ; 
or as of an extinct race of wolves or tigers, prowl- 
ing maliciously around the folds they dare not rav- 
age. I believe in him as I believe in this terrible 
Napoleon Bonaparte ; and I have not the least idea 
how the war is to end.” 

“ He is vanquished,” I said. “Iam quite sure 
how the war will end. But of course I am not 
sure how this campaign will end.” 

“ You are thinking of Clapham,” she said, “ and 
its campaign against wrongs, against m, Bride 
Danescombe, the slaveholders. I can tell you how 
that will end. Slavery will be abolished, sooner 
or later, in ten, say, or twenty or forty years ; that 
is, such slavery as Acts of Parliament can abolish. 
But things are not so simple as you and Piers and 
Clapham think. That is the perplexity about the 
Bible. All the problems there are so simple. 
There is Christ and Satan, the world and the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


237 


Church, light and darkness, scarlet and white, 
Babylon and the Bride. But here nothing is sim- 
ple ; it is all twilight, and intermixing of every 
color, and complications of every form. While 
this contest is going on in Parliament, generations 
are finishing the warfare, and passing away to be 
judged. I am passing on to be judged, Bride, and 
my poor slaves are passing on, and we shall meet 
there, and we cannot meet here ; and it seems as 
- if I might do everything, and I can do nothing. 
How can I help believing in two powers ? ” 

Her voice and her whole frame quivered, and 
she stood still. 

“How could I help believing them almost 
equal ? at least,” she added, with a sudden illumina- 
tion of her whole countenance, “ I did believe so 
till last night.” 

In all our intercourse, intimate as it had been, 
implied as all this had been, she had never spoken 
directly thus before. 

She sat down on the stump of a tree, and, look- 
ing down, began to write on the ground with her 
foot. 

“ Where do you think I spent last night ? ” she 
resumed, suddenly looking up, her whole face radi- 
ant. “ In the church, by the tombs of my fore- 
fathers. Granny does not know, of course. But 
I was quite sure it would do me good, and quite 
sure she would not let me go. So I took Chloe 
and went. To-day I shall tell her. She will 
storm, and then she will smile, and she will call me 


238 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


mad, and like me rather the better for doing it, and 
for daring her. It was so strange, Bride, in the 
night. The wood was as weird as the church. In- 
deed the church felt quite homelike after it. Na- 
ture is not all good and sweet. She is dualistic at 
all events. She has tigers and serpents, and hur- 
ricanes and volcanoes, and earthquakes and ava- 
lanches ; and even in her tame state here in Eng- 
land, her winds and rivers moan and roar with voices 
not altogether angelic. They did, at least, last 
night. To-day the wind is a playmate — the wa- 
ters are trickling and sparkling, leaping and cours- 
ing like horses set free on the moors. Last night 
they crept and whirled and plashed sullenly into 
terrible dark, deep pools, where they could drown 
people ^ and the winds wailed and laughed and 
jabbered and made sudden angry rushes at us.” 

“ ’Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all,” 
I said smiling. 

“ It was not conscience,” she said, “ and I was 
not afraid. It was simply the night, the dark side, 
which is always there. It was the beautiful tamed 
leopard showing her teeth. They may call her a 
nurse of men if they like. But she is a nurse of 
another race, a passionate, tropical creature. If she 
loves us sometimes, at other times she turns on us, 
and envies and hates us, and in her rage will do us 
any mischief she can. One does not know what 
dark old memories are haunting and maddening 
her ; perhaps it is those mighty fallen spirits of 
Milton’s. Their memories are bitter enough. At 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


239 


any rate, it is very strange to me that men, poets 
and others, can go on sentimentalizing about nature 
as if she were a beautiful, meek, passive creature, 
that meant us nothing but good.” 

“ But you got into the church ? ” 

“ Yes ; there it was different ; there I felt at 
home.” 

“Yet,” I said, “ some people would think the 
church, with the tombs and the silence, far more 
dreadful at midnight than the woods.” 

a Because they think the dead are there. We 
are Christians, and we know there are no dead” 
she said in a low voice. “ The dust of those who 
died is there — all that nature can touch or dissolve. 
Certainly I am not afraid of that, no more now than 
on the first day when they let us kiss the cold hands. 
If those who have died were there, Bride,” she add- 
ed, her rich voice becoming tremulous, u certainly 
you and I would feel something very different from 
fear. There are two tombs there, you know, of my 
ancestors. I knelt between them, and it helped me. 
One was the Crusaders, with the crossed feet, the 
rigid, recumbent, stone limbs and helmed head, and 
the reverent clasped hands. That helped me. He 
had lived in his day for something more than hunt- 
ing and feasting, doing what he liked, and adding 
field to field : He had toiled through mountain and 
plain, and done things he did not like, fought and 
hungered and suffered just to rescue that little sacred 
spot of earth from tlicr Infidel, just because for three 
days the Lord who died for us had been buried 


240 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


there. How simple the combat seemed to him ! 
Infidel and believer, Turk and Christian, a plain,, 
visible piece of earth to rescue from undeniable 
visible flesh-and-blood foes, and he would have 
done his work, and pleased the Master ; as simple 
as for Abraham, or Moses, or David, or Daniel. 
How easy for him to dare or to sacrifice anything, 
everything ! So sure he must have been and so 
single-hearted.” 

“But it was not so sure! at least it does not 
seem so to us,” I said. 

“ That is the worst of it. The wavs which 
seem so plain at the time are not always those 
which shine out unquestionable afterwards. The 
Elizabethan monument helped me more. The hus- 
band on the couch, not recumbent, reclining. I 
like the recumbent, pra}^erful effigy better. But 
of course he would not be there reposing if it did 
not mean that the active work of life were over for 
him. Beside him the wife kneeling in prayer, with 
all the children in the quaint rutfs and robes kneel- 
ing behind her. I have always been attached to 
that family of my ancestors. The whole of them 
seem waiting, just as I am. The father waiting 
for death and its awakenings ; the mother and the 
children for life and its duties. So they have knelt 
for two hundred years. I knelt beside them, and 
tried to pray. Their path could not have been so 
simple. The Reformation had come, and the 
w T orld had grown very entangled and complicated. 
What numbers of good people thought the word 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


241 


and will of God, others thought heresy and self- 
will. It must have been like it is now. They had 
need to pray and wait. It was good to kneel be- 
side them in the silence. There is wonderful help 
in silence.” 

“We can seldom have silence like that,” I said. 

“ Ho,” she said ; “ it seemed to take substance 
— a silence and a darkness that might be felt. The 
wind moaned a little through the churchyard trees, 
but it seemed in another world. It was in an- 
other world. It is not spirit, with all its spirit- 
ual seeming ; it is of the earth earthy, as much as 
the dust it raises. There was no sound near me 
but poor Chloe’ s breathing, and she was too fright- 
ened to do anything but breathe, or rather pant. 
But Chloe was not in any other world. She was 
not of the things that perish, poor dear, but of the 
things that abide, for love abides ; and she is little 
else, to God and to me, and to all. She helped me 
most of all, most of all, Bride. It was through 
Chloe, Bride, that this wonderful light came to me. 
It was so strange. It came down on me with over- 
whelming power, that our Lord, the Son of God 
— oh, Bride, think ! — had died the death of a slave ; 
a death only slaves could die ! 

“ The nature He stooped to is ours — and what 
stooping ! but the place He stooped to, the death 
He was obedient to, is that of the Cross, that of 
the slave. 

“ I cannot tell you what I felt. It seemed to 
me as if the Blessed Lord Himself were kneeling 
16 


242 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


there beside me, as He did in Gethsemane, identi- 
fied with poor Chloe, looking up to God and saying 
of her and her poor, low, despised race, ‘ I in thee, 
and they in Me ; ’ and then round on His Christen- 
dom — His England — on me, Bride, saying, ‘ Why 
persecutest thou Me f 9 

“ One with Chloe — that seemed clear ! But oh, 
Bride, yet also one with me ! Stooping as low to 
reach me as to reach her — lower , since pride is 
lowest of all , and love is highest of all ; and I was 
full of pride, and she was full of love. 

“ And I wept as I never wept before. And I 
said in my heart to Him that I would be one with 
those poor, despised ones, would live for them and 
under the burden of their wrongs, until they could 
be lifted off, and do my best to lighten their wrongs, 
aud succor and sustain them, and lead them to 
Him, all my life. 

“ And then the great church bell boomed out 
midnight, and the chimes rang out, 6 Praise God? 
And it seemed like a voice of which others might 
say, £ It thundered ; 5 but to me it said, This is my 
\ beloved Son in whom 1 am well pleased , hear 
Him? And my vow was accepted, and I was con- 
secrated to His service, in the least of those His 
brethren forever. 

“ Oh, Bride, I rose so joyful. And then I kissed 
Chloe, and we cried together. Poor Chloe is al- 
ways ready for that. And even the ‘how’ per- 
plexes me no longer. If he will take us as His 
servants, it is His work, not ours, and He has to 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


243 


show us the way. That is his part, you know, 
and He will not, cannot fail. But still I am more 
of a Dualist than a Pantheist. I am sure the battle 
is very real, and I cannot tell how my part of it 
will end.” 

Then we gave each other a long embrace, and 
at the little gate of the wood we parted, and her 
last words were— 

“ Perhaps at Clapham you may find out some- 
thing, Bride, to help me to help. We are women, 
you know, now, and it is time our work should 
begin.” 




CHAPTER XY. 



]IiE leave-takings before our journey to 
London were numerous. 

Piers and I were, in a way, the prop- 
erty of the whole town. My father’s 
genial ways, his large employment of labor, his 
real “ public spirit,” which made the well-being of 
Abbot’s Weir a matter of as grave interest to him 
as that of his own affairs, his countless unostenta- 
tious private kindnesses, of which we were often the 
ministers, the long establishment of the family in 
the town and neighborhood, gave us a relationship 
to the little community, isolated from all other 
communities by the steep and muddy lanes which 
led to it, and by the rocky moors and furzy downs 
which bordered its territories on more than one side. 

One custom instituted by my own mother had 
brought me into contact with many of our neigh- 
bors. Every Saturday, in my childhood, I, and 
afterwards Piers, had been despatched laden with 
a great basketful of fresh fruit and vegetables from 
our large garden to various people who had known, 
or might have known, better days, and who could 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


245 


only be relieved without being wounded, in the 
form of a kind of hospitality. “ You know the 
sunny slopes on which they grew,” my father 
would say, “and that always , makes things taste 
better.” Then there were the workmen, who, 
according to their prejudices or intelligence, re- 
garded our going as a glorious voyage of discovery, 
or a perilous venture; and the wagoners, who 
warned us solemnly against “ them racing fast 
coaches ; ” the shopkeepers, especially Mrs. Burn- 
aby the confectioner, who made the most original 
and artistic sweetmeats, and whose shop we only 
avoided through delicacy, so liberal was her heart, 
“who expected we should think little of her tarts 
when we came back, and yet we might find 
there were a few things they did not do better in 
London;” and Mrs. Wilmington, the bookseller, 
whose whole little store of books used to be at our 
service when childish illnesses drove us to literature, 
and who always in after-days kept for us the first 
reading of Sir Walter, and who, having an en- 
larged mind in her prim little body, assured us 
that “ the best books had not been written in Lon- 
Idon, whatever anybody might say.” And, above 
all, there was Priscy Pengelly, who condoled with 
us, and ominously “ hoped that we might find things 
as we left them ; ” and Eeuben, who admitted that it 
would be a fine thing to see John Wesley’s great 
chapel at the Foundry, “ up to London,” and to 
see Squire Wilberforce, but reminded us that 
London was no nearer heaven than Abbot’s Weir, 


246 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


“ though sure enough, it was as near.” “ As near,” 
he concluded, passing his rough hand over his eyes, 
“ never you forget that. And God forbid I should, 
though it does seem cruel far away.” 

And there were all the things and persons that 
could not be taken leave of — the dear familiar 
dropping- well, and garden slopes, and the Leas and 
the Leat, and the hills, and the little children, who 
could not understand leave-takings, and would so 
soon forget, and the dear dogs, who did quite un- 
derstand to their distress that we were going away, 
but could not understand we were to return, and 
would not forget. 

And Madame des Ormes, who said — 

“ Your London is not to you what our Paris 
was to us. That was like the heart of France- 
poor, passionate, foolish heart — which we loved, and 
which has lost itself and betrayed us. London is 
only brain, I think, to England, very busy and 
clever, but I do not see that you love it. It will 
not absorb you, my child, or make you forget us ; 
I am not afraid. London is very large,” she con- 
tinued, “ hut perhaps you will be able to give this 
packet into the hand of my friend. It is a letter of 
our martyred Madame Elizabeth, which she will 
like to see, too precious to send by post. And for 
you, you must take some little souvenir of the old 
Frenchwoman for whom you had so much good 
ness.” And she placed in my hand a little bracelet 
of the renaissance work, with a locket enamelled 
with roses and Loves, and also, I suppose to neu- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


247 


tralize my vanity, a copy of Thomas a Kempis 
in French. “You will not object to the little 
Loves ?” she said, clasping it ronnd my arm. 
“Baptize them, my child, with your own tender 
spirit, and they become little angels.” 

In Claire’s eyes there were tears, and a tremor 
was in her voice. 

u I have painted you a flower,” she said ; “ I 
had nothing else.” 

And she gave me a little painted velvet pincush- 
ion, with forget-me-nots. 

I missed it the first day of our journey, and 
never found it till long years afterwards, poor little 
faded treasure. 

Miss Felicity shook her head and compressed 
her lips. She had never liked people wandering 
from their kith and kin and all belonging to them, 
and it was of no use to pretend she did. She had 
seen no good come of it. People, especially young 
people, came back fancying themselves half a head 
taller because they had stood on the top of St. 
Paul’s, and a whole world wiser, because they had 
seen a few miles more of it. But when you came to 
think of it, crowds were made up of men, women, 
and children, and men, women, and children were 
no bigger and no wiser because there were a hun- 
dred thousand of them at hand instead of three. 
However, she had done her best to ground us well, 
and she hoped we should come back as good as, on 
the whole, we went. 


248 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Loveday said little. But her dear eyes shone 
more than usual. 

“ You will see the men who are fighting the 
battle for us all,” she said. “ Don’t let anything 
make you mistake them. The good fight is fought, 
visibly, remember, not by angels, but by men and 
women and little children, by poor King David, and 
by Jonathan, who could not do without the honey. 
You would not have thought the dear apostle 
Peter had walked on the sea, and would die on the 
cross, if you had heard him that dreadful night, and 
seen him warming himself at the fire. Did you 
say you wish I were going with you, my dear? 
It seems as if it would be a wonderful help : and 
I shall so miss you, Bride and Piers ! But we 
shall see them all one day, you know,” she added, 
“ see them at their very best , and for a long time 
be at home with them, Bride ! ” 

And she looked so near seeing the just made 
perfect, with her dear pallid face, and the far-away 
look in her eyes, that I could do nothing but cry 
and feel as if the parting w T ere for ever, though I 
insisted to her that it was but for a very little while. 

My father made less of it than any one in words. 

“ One would think the children were going to 
be married, or going to emigrate to Kova Scotia,” 
he said, “ from the fuss made about it.” 

He entirely declined to allow that the expedi- 
tion was anything of importance, but meanwhile 
he was constantly recurring to it with a tender 
solicitude which often made me ready to give it 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


249 


up, incessantly planning one small comfort or an- 
other, with a certain uneasy sense that he had to 
be both mother and father to us, and did not ex- 
actly know how. 

Mrs. Danescombe, on the other hand, told me 
that it was a most momentous crisis of my life. 
One could not tell what might not depend on our 
making a pleasant impression on our cousins, who 
were, she understood, most influential and highly 
cultivated people. And she gave Piers and me di- 
rections as to forms of address and behavior which 
would have infallibly given us an air of elaborately 
concealed rusticity, had we not forgotten them ail 
and fallen back on our natural manners. 

She was most solicitous also as to preparations 
of clothes, deeming no mantuamaker in Abbot’s 
Weir sufficiently fashionable, until my father sug- 
gested that a smaller wardrobe and a fuller purse 
would be far more advantageous ; in consequence 
of which suggestion we were sent away with light 
luggage, well-filled purses, and endless recommen- 
dations to observe and bring back the fashions 
which our “influential’’ cousins affected. 

At the last moment there were so many forgot 
ten trifles to be remembered, and so many last di- 
rections to be received, and so many fears of being 
late, that there was no leave-taking at all. 

We were in the weekly coach struggling up the 
steep hill which led out of the town, Piers and I, 
launched on the wide world together, in the dusk 
of the winter morning, before I had time to think. 


250 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


It was not, however, nntill the last familiar grey 
Tor had vanished out of sight, at the next town, 
where we were to change from the heavy Abbot’s 
Weir coach into what was considered the marvel 
of speed and convenience which was to convey us 
by the main road to London, and until the last face 
and voice familiar from childhood had been left be- 
hind, that I felt we were really off. 

From the warm nest into the world — “ the cold 
world,” as some people called it. 

I did not think the world seemed cold at all. 
Every one was very protective and kind to us, 
more protective than Piers always altogether liked, 
he being now for the first time my “ natural pro- 
tector.” But how warm the nest had been I had 
certainly never felt before. 

Yet after all, some of the best warmth of the 
nest was with me. I had Piers to watch over ; 
and Piers had me. And most delightful it cer- 
tainly was to belong entirely to each other, and to 
have the world before us. Since we were children 
we had not had such long unbroken talks. And 
now we were better than children, it seemed to us, 
and the things we had to talk about in what seemed 
then the long common past, and the long unroll- 
ed future, were of endless interest. 

And Piers reminded me in so many ways of 
father, countless little turns of manner and little 
dry, droll sayings, and little thoughtful attentions 
to one’s comfort. And yet so different, more re- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


251 


served, more decided, more definite, more of the 
master about him ; people did what he said as a 
matter of course ; less seeing on all sides, perhaps 
seeing better the one point to be reached ; less san- 
guineness, yet more hope. 

It distresses me that I can picture him so little 
in words ; that picture always so clear to me. Es- 
pecially Piers. It was the absence of self-assertion, 
with the quiet power of commanding because he 
knew what and when to command, and did not 
care in the least for ruling for its own sake, but 
only for getting things rightly done, and people 
effectively helped, the gravity, with the under-cur- 
rent of joyousness, the quick sense of ludicrous 
incongruity, with the under-current of tender, help- 
ful, chivalrous sympathy that made satire impossi- 
ble to him. And when I have put down all these 
words, I find I have only balanced one tint against 
another, and left no color at all ; no picture, no in- 
dividual, but a type. And he was altogether in- 
dividual, and so full of life and variety, entirely 
unlike any one else. Well it would not be easy 
to describe an oak, the most individual tree in ex 
istence, to any one who had not seen it. A branch 
here, and a branch there, and leaves everywhere, 
and the branches full of every conceivable twist, 
moulded by winds of circumstance, and the whole 
full of all conceivable majestic symmetry, growing 
by inward laws of life, and the root grasping the 
earth as if for eternity, and the leaves fluttering 


252 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


each with its own delicate variety of tint and form, 
and the shadow a shelter that has sheltered and 
will shelter generations. But there my oak was, 
and that was enough for me. 




CHAPTER XYI. 



E travelled for the most part outside the 
coach, and not through an altogether 
happy land. A series of bad harvests 
had raised the price of bread, while the 
French war barred our access to the abundant corn 
fields of the Continent., 

The people, often so heroically patient in suf- 
ferings they feel to be inevitable, were by no means 
persuaded that the hunger they had now to endure 
was inevitable. 

The one gigantic imperial form of Napoleon 
had scarcely yet effaced in the popular imagination 
the promises of the Republic. England was by no 
means of one heart and soul in the war, in any 
class or station. There was a suspicion in many 
minds that we were starving ourselves to enslave 


our neighbors. From the commencement, not only 
Mr. Fox, but Mr. Wilberforce, courageously aban- 
doning his party, had been against it ; and by this 
time the majority, enlightened by the failure of 
our large subsidies and our little army on the Con- 


254 : 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


tinent, and not even consoled by onr splendid suc- 
cesses at sea, were brought round to his opinions. 

Moreover there was another gigantic imperial 
power rising not before the imagination, but before 
the eyes, and in spite of the hands, of the people ; 
the power of Steam. 

Against this the people had dashed themselves 
again and again in blind fury, in what were even 
now beginning to be the manufacturing districts 
in the north, burning the machinery, and hunting 
the inventors out of the country ; poor human 
hands and hearts wounding themselves like chil- 
dren in vain assaults against the impassive irresist- 
ible force of material progress ! 

Our way, however, did not lie through these 
more disturbed districts, but through the agricul- 
tural lands of the south. 

It was not so much riot and ruin that we saw 
as quiet uncontending misery ; hollow-eyed, hun- 
gry faces, feeble bent forms that should have been 
those of strong men, and worn old faces that should 
have been those of children. Misery, hunger, star 
vation ; patient, not through hope, but through 
hopelessness. 

In one town indeed through which we passed, 
we found broken windows in the bakers’ shops, and 
men still hanging about in muttering groups, the 
sullen remnants of a mob recently hindered from 
burning the flour- mills. 

The bewildered magistrates had met, and 
having consulted how to compel a reduction of 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


255 


prices, had felt the bakers and millers too strong 
to be assailed, and had therefore valiantly directed 
their attack on the market-women, who were 
solemnly and severely commanded to sell their 
butter at tenpence a pound. 

The government mode of relief was scarcely 
less blind than that of the mob. While the mob 
attacked the bakers, Parliament passed a bill en- 
joining the use of brown bread. 

Through this hungry and bewildered England 
the four horses of the stage-coach bore us, toiling 
up the green hills of our southern counties, and 
galloping across the many heaths and commons 
then still free ; over plains historical with battles 
of old civil wars ; passing in the twilight the weird 
giant stone-circles of a forgotten faith ; seeing the 
spires or fretted towers of old cathedrals grow from 
grey delicate lines into majestic solidity as we ap- 
proached ; everywhere our arrival an event ; wel- 
comed in village and city inns by facetious hos- 
tlers, officious waiters, jolly landlords, and patron- 
izing landladies. But always behind and around 
were those silent languid groups of hungry-eyed 
men and women, and grave children. 

At last we drew near the great City. Two 
masses stood out distinctly, through the smoke and 
the twilight, the dome of St. Paul’s, and the twin 
towers of Westminster Abbey. With these last 
we claimed a kind of kinship through our old Print- 
ing House in the Abbey churchyard of Abbot’s 
Weir, where one of the earliest printing-presses in 


256 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


England liad co-existed with the Caxton press at 
Westminster. 

My father had often told us of it, and the little 
link seemed to make those abbey towers like a wel- 
come. 

There was little time, however, to observe 
buildings, at no time the characteristic glory of 
London. 

We had entered the streets; and the multi- 
tudes and masses of human beings seemed to seize 
and overwhelm me, heart and mind, like a great 
Atlantic wave, and take away my breath. I seem- 
ed to pant to get to an end, a shore. And there 
was no end, no shore ! only always, on and on, those 
busy, crowded streets, those wildernesses of human 
dwellings. I felt altogether lost, my individuality 
swept away and drowned, in the bewildering, busy 
whirlpool of those unknown crowds. 

I could not account for it. If I could not have 
r held Piers’s hand I think I must have cried out, 
like somebody drowning. As it was, I squeezed 
his arm as if I were clinging to him for life. He 
laughed, and asked if I was afraid, and said it was 
as easy to the coachman to drive through London 
streets as to one of our wagoners to plod through 
the lanes of Abbot’s Weir. 

I knew the feeling was exaggerated and unrea- 
sonable, but I could neither explain nor help it. 

And then, all at once, floating on my heart the 
words — 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 257 

“ And Jesus seeing the multitudes , had com- 
passion on them” 

They relieved me. Tears came, and I let them 
flow quietly. 

All the majesty of that pitying Presence came 
over me ! And I seemed to nestle like a child to 
that tender mighty Heart. I felt there was room 
for one of those overwhelming crowds there , and 
feeling this I was at home. 

At the coach door we were met by Cousin 
Crichton. He did not look in the least over- 
whelmed by the din or the crowd. He looked 
too solid and, at the same time, too buoyant to be 
overwhelmed by anything. The evils he could 
not beat off like a rock, he would float over like a 
buoy. He welcomed us as if he had known us for 
years. 

“ Ho more luggage than that ! ” he said, stow- 
ing away our boxes in the hackney coach he had 
ready for us. “Well done, Cousin Bride, I will 
take you to the Wall of China, if you like, with 
the same equipage, if only as a standing protest 
against my girls.” 

I felt a little abashed. He did not mean to be 
sarcastic, I was sure. His voice and his face were 
too round and hearty for satire. But in the grave 
footman who helped me into the carriage I detect- 
ed a shade of condescension, inevitable from so solid 
a personage towards a young lady whose wardrobe 
could be compressed into one trunk. Also, I felt 
17 


258 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


it necessary to justify the liberality of my father’s 
arrangements. 

“We thought Cousin Barbara would help us 
to buy suitable things,” I answered, apologetic- 
ally. 

“ Apologizing for your virtues ? Don’t, my 
dear ! At least not before your cousins, I pray.” 

We crossed Westminster Bridge. The last 
faint gold of sunset was dying away over the 
broad river and in the frosty sky, but there was 
just enough color to contrast with the dim grey 
of the Abbey towers, and the roofs of the old 
Houses of Parliament. 

Again that absurd inclination to tears came 
over me. The Abbey brought back our abbey, 
and Abbot’s Weir, and father ; and the Houses of 
Parliament seemed sacred with memories of Love- 
day, and of the eloquent voices that had pleaded 
there for the slaves, and would go on pleading 
there until the great wrong was righted. 

As we went on, Cousin Crichton poured out 
information which he thought would interest us. 
He pointed out Mr. Wedgwood’s works, in Greek 
Street, Soho, and thence diverged to Bolton and 
Watt’s, at Soho near Birmingham, and spoke of 
engines of a thousand horse power, and said they 
were beginning a social revolution greater than 
the French. 

He showed us Covent Garden Theatre. “ Na- 
tional ! ” he remarked, “ whether we approved of 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


259 


it or not, and historical. David Garrick acted 
there ; Hannah More’s friend, you know.” 

He told us, 'as we drove over Westminster 
Bridge, that there was a larger mass of stone in 
that bridge than in St. Paul’s. 

I felt I ought to be astonished at everything. 
Piers evidently took it all in, and was much inter- 
ested. 

But I had very vague ideas as to “ horse pow- 
ers” and comparative quantities of stone, and 
although I had certainly heard of David Garrick, 
I felt in disgraceful ignorance as to Mrs. Hannah 
More, apparently, in my uncle’s eyes, the largei 
celebrity of the two. 

At last I ventured to ask if it was really there, 
under those roofs, that Mr. Wilberforce spoke, and 
Mr. Clarkson got all that terrible anti-slavery 
evidence listened to, which it cost him such labor 
to collect? 

He turned on me with a look of pleased sur- 
prise. 

“ Then the echoes of our battles have reached 
the quiet old town ? ” 

“ My father cares for nothing more ! ” I said. 
“ We have heard about it all our lives.” 

He seemed moved, and gave my hand a hearty 
shake. 

“ Have you West Indians, then, in Abbot’s 
Weir ? What has roused up the dear, sleepy old 
town ? ” 


260 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


“ I don’t think the old town is roused up,” I 
said. “ It is only father and Loveday Benbow.” 

“ Benbow ! I seem to know the name,” he said. 

“Her father is Lieutenant Benbow, and her 
mother was a Quaker, and she is an invalid, and 
has suffered much,” I said, “but she cares for 
what the slaves suffer more than for all her own 
pain.” 

“Ah,” he said, “the Quakers were always 
sound on that point ; some of our best men are 
among them. So you have not had any abolition 
meetings,” he continued, with a business-like prac- 
tical eye to “ the cause % ” “ Any slave-holders ? ” 

“ One,” I said, “ one of our dearest friends. 
But she hates it.” 

“ Ah,” he sighed, “ she has seen it, I sup- 
pose.” 

And then he pointed out to me the house where 
Granville Sharpe lived. 

“ He is an old acquaintance, too, I suppose,” he 
said smiling. 

“ The oldest of all,” I said. “We like him best 
of all.” 

“ A very sound man,” he replied ; “ a little 
crotchety ; peculiar views as to prophecy, but very 
sound.” 

I felt a little chilled at the term. Would 
Andromeda have liked to hear Perseus called noth- 
ing more sublime than “ sound \ ” 

“ There he is ! ” exclaimed Cousin Crichton. 

He stopped the coach, and I actually saw him ; 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


261 


looked into the fine face with the broad forehead, 
the delicate, feminine curves of the lip, the mass- 
ive, resolute chin. 

“ Here is a young lady who is quite sound as 
to the blacks , 55 said Cousin Crichton. 

And Mr. Sharpe smiled benignantly in at the 
coach window, and I actually shook hands with 
him ; had my hand in the friendly grasp of the 
hand that had rescued poor bruised and battered 
Jonathan Strong, and searched among the law- 
books and records, against the counsel of lawyers 
and judges, until it drew the true law of England 
to the light and laid the foundation of the liberty 
of all slaves in the righteous judgment of one free 
country. 

I was quite beyond tears then. 

“ Thank you, that is worth coming to London 
for, Cousin Crichton ! 55 I said, as we drove on 
again. “ The first of them all ; he who began it 
all ! 55 

“ Shall we see Mr. Clarkson ? 55 I ventured to 
ask, feeling as if everything good were possible 
now. 

“ Clarkson ? Ah, I am not sure. An excel* 
lent hard-working man ; but he does not belong to 
Clapham 5 ’ (the “ but 55 sounded like “ although”) “ a 
good hand at the foundations, Clarkson. But to- 
morrow you shall see Mr. Wilberforce’s house, per- 
haps himself . 55 

And that, I felt, was like saying, “ You have 


262 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


seen the ministers; to-morrow yon shall see the 
king.” 

The coach drove through a handsome stone 
gateway, and round a wide sweep of lawn, and 
stopped at a porch, very Grecian and impressive, 
though vague as to style. 

In a moment we were in the brilliantly-lighted 
drawing-room, with lamps in various places, and a 
table set with silver and with flowers, and a steam- 
ing urn, and a great glowing coal-fire, and a party 
of most cordially-minded cousins, who kissed us 
as if they had known us for years, and their father, 
as if they had parted from him for years, and all 
fell on us at once with various hospitable proposi- 
tions, until Cousin Crichton came to the rescue. 

“ Stand back, girls. You set all ceremonial at 
defiance. Cousin Bride Danescombe, let me intro- 
duce you one by one, beginning at the beginning. 
You have heard of the Admirable Crichton. 
These are all Admirable Crichtons. This is Hatty, 
who has a talent for finding out the most won- 
derful people to admire; and this is Matty, 
who has a talent for finding out the most uncom- 
fortable people to comfort ; and this is Phoebe, 
who has a talent for finding out the most imprac- 
ticable people to reform ; and this,” he added, 
placing my hand in his wife’s, “ is your Cousin Bar- 
bara, the Admirable Crichton, who has a talent 
for loving every one lovable or unlovable, and 
will certainly take to loving you. The boys may 
introduce themselves,” waving his hand to three 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


263 


tall young men. “ And,” he concluded, “ there 
is the Lower House in the nursery. And there 
is little Martha up stairs.” As he spoke of little 
Martha he unconsciously lowered his voice, as we 
do in speaking of something sacred ; and I noticed 
she was the only one who had no pet name ; the 
one little patient sufferer in that prosperous, joyous 
home. Any name that belonged to her became a 
pet name only by its being hers. To me, indeed, 
when I learned to love her, she made the prosaic- 
sounding name of Martha as sweet and high as 
“ Mary,” so that I had always, after knowing her, 
a prejudice to overcome against any of the many 
occasions in which poor Martha and her blundering 
love were held up to severe animadversion. 

There was a wonderful glow about the whole 
evening ; the welcome, the lights in such abundance 
as I had never seen, the glowing masses of coal in 
the large grate, to which I was not accustomed, 
the rosy glow on my cousins’ faces, the tender 
motherly light in their mother’s eyes. 

Cousin Crichton declared I looked as fresh as 
if I had come out of a bandbox. “ But, talking of 
bandboxes, girls,” he added. “ I should like you 
to see what your cousin can do with ; or with- 
out ! ” 

But Cousin Barbara said I must be tired, and 
gently led me up stairs. 

Into such a bedrooom ! and with such a fire ! I 
had never had a fire in my bedroom in my life, 


264 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


except for a week when 1 had the measles. I felt 
I must in honesty disclaim such luxuries. 

And there were book-shelves, and a sofa, and a 
writing-table with lovely exotic hot-house flowers 
on it, and a cheval-glass with lighted candles in 
brackets, and the fire-light flickering on the crimson 
damask draperies of such a magnificence of a bed ! 
It would require a special ceremonial to get into 
it. The room was a residence; a house, a garden, 
a palace ! My poor little trunk did look very 
meagre in it. 

“How kind!” I said, “how luxurious and 
beautiful everything is! So much too good for 
me, Cousin Barbara. You must put me in some 
little room fit for a girl.” 

“I hope you will be comfortable, my dear,” 
she said, “ we do not wish to have luxuries, but we 
do try to make people comfortable.” 

She left me, and in a few minutes her kind soft 
voice was at the door again. 

“My dear,” she said, “you will not mind just 
looking in on little Martha. She has been expect- 
ing you, and she wants a kiss.” 

We went in. 

There she lay, on a couch near the fire, her 
eager face welcoming me ; her eyes with that wist- 
ful look of suffering in them questioning mine ; 
her long, thin little hands still holding mine, so as 
not to let me go, when she had kissed me. The 
large eyes seemed satisfied with their answer, I 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


265 


suppose partly because I could scarcely meet them 
for tears. 

“ Kiss me again, Cousin Bride,” she said. 

And the second kiss was not that of a stranger. 

I felt there was one place at least in that great, 
glad, wealthy household where I should be wanted, 
and therefore should be at home. 

Then one flying glimpse in their beds in the 
nursery at the Lower House, which unconstitution- 
ally refused to go to sleep without seeing the new 
cousin. 

Then down again to the full, bright room. 

“ You will excuse our having only brown-bread, 
and no pastry, and no sugar,” said Cousin Crichton. 
“ The brown-bread is law, of course. The no pas- 
try is our voluntary contribution to the scarcity ; 
it seems a shame to be making into luxuries what 
others cannot get enough of to live on. But the 
no sugar is not compulsory. That, you know, is 
our protest against the slave-trade. Perhaps you 
take sugar.” 

Piers and I had given it up for years. 

“ Three hundred thousand, Clarkson found in 
one of his journeys, had done the same ; and some 
persons refuse to sell it. A little self-denial does 
none of us any harm.” 

It seemed strange to me to associate the 
thought of self-denial with that abundant table, 
with its cold and hot meats and elaborate cakes, 
and foreign preserves and dried fruits, and hot- 
house grapes, and many luxuries new to my pro- 


266 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


vincial imagination. But it seemed to gratify 
Cousin Crichton to feel we were seasoning our dain- 
ties with that little pinch of self-denial, so of course 
I said nothing. 

I think the thought of those starving men and 
women and little children, of whom we had been 
seeing so many, would have made it difficult for 
me to enjoy anything as my cousin wished that 
evening, — (of course I was over-fatigued and over- 
excited,) — if it had not been for the thought of that 
dear little worn face up stairs. 

This family also was, after all, bearing some 
share of the burdens of the world. 

We had family prayers, (not then a matter of 
course), commenced by a very impressive proces- 
sion of servants, headed by the portly housekeeper, 
a far more majestic person than Cousin Barbara, 
and closed by a frightened-looking little maid, 
whom I concluded must be one of Cousin Hatty’s 
uncomfortable people to be comforted, or one of 
Phoebe’s impracticable people to be reformed. 

Yery hearty and benevolent those prayers seem- 
ed to me, and very humble I am sure they were 
meant to be. Our unworthiness and absence of all 
merit was much lamented in them ; and the whole 
world, black and white, heathen and Christian, 
were most affectionately remembered, our “ poorer 
brethren ’’ (among whom my cousins diligently la- 
bored) ; the millions of India and China, for whose 
sake the Church Missionary Society had just been 
instituted. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


267 


But somehow it felt as if we were people on a 
safe and sunny island interceding for those still 
struggling in the cold and perilous sea ; people set 
apart in an oasis of exceptional plenty to shower 
down our alms and blessings on a hungry world. 

Except in one tender little sentence, in which 
“ the beloved member of this family who cannot he 
with us,” was in a few words and tremulous tones 
commended to the merciful Father. 

As I lay awake in my regal bed that night 
watching the delightful friendly flicker of the fire- 
light on the mirror, the hooks, the mahogany 
wardrobe, the crimson damask curtains, I felt that 
“ comfort ” was a word that covered a good deal in 
the Crichton vocabulary ; and that the distinction 
so clear to kind Cousin Barbara between “ comfort- 
able” and “ luxurious” was rather too subtle for a 
provincial mind like mine. 

I had never before known intimately a full 
complete family life such as this. It had so hap- 
pened, I saw as I looked back to Abbot’s Weir, 
that my little world there was a world of frag- 
ments. Our own home, happy as I was there, had 
never been complete since our mother went, and 
never could be more. Amice, Loveday, Miss Fe- 
licity, sweet little Claire and her mother, Uncle 
Fyford, and Dick Fyford were all fragments, more 
or less rugged or round, broken off from complete 
family life, or never having been moulded into it. 

But this was a complete, warm, sunny, healthy, 
rich, round world, with all that were therein. Its 


268 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


sun and moon, and all its stars were there. The 
father lovingly providing, generously bestowing, 
ruling, delighting in the children ; the mother lov- 
ing, sympathizing, understanding, serving ; all the 
brothers and sisters so full of life, and activity, and 
happiness — so full of trusted and trusting love. 
How beautiful, how dear, how warm it was ! And 
how much warmth it must shed all around ! What 
a picture of “the Father’s House” to those around 
it ; what a foretaste of it to those within ! 

Yet my thoughts would wander back to that 
bewildered, battling, toiling, struggling England ; 
that bewildered, battling world outside, and could 
find no rest. 

Until they came back and did find rest in Cous- 
in Martha’s sick chamber. 

Little Martha seemed to link that abounding 
prosperous family with the suffering, weary, strug- 
gling world outside, and to make the contrast less 
oppressive. 

Our blessed Lord did not live in an oasis, when 
He was visibly in this world, any more than he 
lived in the deserts ; but on the open hillsides ; in 
the city streets where the lame and blind were, 
and the sick were brought to the doors ; on the 
dusty roads ; by the village well, thirsty and weary, 
really poor. 

It seemed to me good for that prosperous house- 
hold that the footprints of poverty should have 
come into one chamber of it, poverty of all that 
makes wealth enjoyable ; thirst and weariness no 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


269 


wealth could relieve; good that there should be 
one on whom the light of the Beatitudes came 
down direct with no necessity for symbolical ex- 
planation ; not as a general declaration, but a per- 
sonal benediction ; not only, “ Blessed are the poor 
in spirit, and they that hunger after righteousness,” 
but “ Blessed be ye poor ; for yours is the kingdom 
of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now ; for ye 


shall be filled.” 




CHAPTER XYII. 

HE history of the anti-slavery struggle 
is not picturesque, at least the English 
portion of it. Its battle-fields are com- 
mittee-rooms of the House of Commons, 
at no time the most picturesque of assemblies, the 
low taverns whence Clarkson hunted out witnesses, 
platforms of abolition meetings, largely attended 
by Quakers, the House of Commons itself ; none 
of them very manageable material from a pictorial 
point of view. Its chief pictorial achievement is 
a terribly geometrical drawing of a section of a 
slave-ship with a cargo of black men and women 
stowed in it “ like herrings in a barrel , 55 only alive 
(at least, alive when they were packed), six feet by 
one foot four inches being the largest space allowed 
to any. Few historical pictures, however, have 
been so effective. It moved the House of Com- 
mons. “ It seemed to make an instantaneous im- 
pression of horror on all who saw it. 5 ’ 

Hor are the sacrifices made by the abolitionists 
such as sensationally to impress the imagination. 
Even such “ a sacrifice to virtue 55 as three hun- 



AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


271 


dred thousand persons giving up sugar, scarcely 
means as much to us as it appears to have meant 
to the sufferers, who, it is recorded, on the prom- 
ise of the abolition of the slave trade in 1796, 
experienced “ great joy,” and “ several in conse- 
quence returned to the use of sugar.” And, ex- 
cepting sugar, the majority of its advocates were 
not mulcted of a luxury. The heart-anguish en- 
dured by men like Clarkson in hunting up evi- 
dence among the lowest haunts of seaport towns 
or on the decks of slave-ships (steeping his soul in 
that bitter cup of cruelty and wretchedness until 
often sleep was impossible); and even the real 
personal danger he encountered ; being once all 
but drowned in a storm he had braved to secure 
a witness, and once all but hustled into the sea 
by a band of slave-traders in the Liverpool docks 
— are not subjects to be dramatically represented. 

Nevertheless in the quiet heroism of “patient 
continuance in well-doing,” strong to keep alive, 
through half a century the glow of sympathetic 
enthusiasm, with no romantic visions or incidents 
to revive it, through the damps and chills of pro- 
saic details of wrong and repeated failures of 
redress, the world has had few nobler examples. 

The extent to which the trumpet was blown 
' in some quarters afterwards, may have given sub- 
sequent generations a tendency to undervalue the 
work. 

But Granville Sharpe, and Clarkson, and Wil- 
berforce, and the leaders of the contest, themselves 


272 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


blew no trumpet before them, called their deeds 
by no grandiloquent names, and never gave them- 
selves out as martyrs or heroes, or anything but 
Christian men determined to lift off a great crime 
from their country and a great wrong from a con- 
tinent. 

I was a little disappointed at the feeling of my 
cousins with regard to the slave-trade. They were 
quite “ sound ” on the subject, of course ; they 
wore Mr. Wedgwood’s cameo of “a man and a 
brother ; ” the}' abstained from sugar ; but they 
were a little tired of the contest. 44 It seemed as 
if it would never come to an end.” It had gone 
on in the House of Commons more than ten years ; 
and ten years to my cousins was the whole of 
conscious life. “ It was remarkable,” Mr. Clarkson 
ays, at the beginning of the century, 44 that the 
outh of the rising generation knew but little 
out the question. For some years the commit- 
had not circulated any books.” 

Nor was the anti-slavery literature very at- 
tractive, or very 44 suitable for circulation in fam- 
ilies.” 

The mere brutality of the wrongs inflicted 
makfe their records as unreadable as the criminal 
columns of a sensational newspaper. Besides, 
the 4 ‘ newest thing,” whether in bonnets or baret- 
tas, in vestments, secular or ecclesiastical, in here- 
sies or in philanthropy — will have irresistible at- 
tractions for 44 the youth of both sexes.” And 
anti-slavery was by no means the newest thing in 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


273 


philanthropy. I found that, through Loveday’s 
burdened heart and Amice’s stricken conscience, I 
knew and felt more about it than my cousins. 
Except little Martha. “ 1 cannot go with my 
sisters to the schools and the poor and the mission- 
ary meetings,” she said ; “ but I can be as near 
the negroes as they can. They say the abolition 
struggle has gone on so long ! but then, you know, 
that is because the misery is going on so long. I 
can sometimes make things to help the Moravian 
missionaries in the West Indies ; and I can always 
ask God to help,” she added, “ at least almost al- 
ways, when my head is not too stupid. And in 
the night when I cannot sleep, I ofteji say over 
the poems and hymns about them by Cowper. 
They make my own little troubles seem noth- 
ing.” 

Moreover, the period during which I first vis- 
ited Clapham w^as the time of a lull in the battle, 
although the preparations were continued, as Mr. 
Wilberforce said, “ with un cooled zeal.” 

In 1800, 1801, 1802, and 1803 it was judged 
expedient to bring forward no motion for abolition 
in the House of Commons. 

My cousins, however, were by no means irre- 
sponsive to my enthusiasm. They were quite 
ready most generously to acknowledge that per- 
haps they had not cared as much as they ought. 
“ It was all so terrible and so hopeless, and there 
seemed nothing girls could do in it, and there were 
thousands of things so full of hope in which they 
18 


274 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


could help ! ” “ They had rather left slavery to 

papa and Mr. Wilberforce and the House of Com- 
mons.” “I must come and see the day-schools 
and Sunday-schools, and attend the meetings at 
Exeter Hall for the Bible Society, and the London 
Missionary Society, and the Church Missionary 
Society.” 

However prosaic and old-fashioned those words 
may sound now, to us, then, they were full of 
spiritual romance, fresh as young leaves, fragrant 
as spring flowers, strong and glad as a river just 
set free from the winter ice. It was a joyous tide 
of new life, and I was swept away in it. 

England had begun to awaken to the fact that 
she had millions of ignorant children to be taught 
the elements of Christianity, and millions of hea- 
then subjects to be evangelized, and a whole world 
within and without in sore need of help. During 
the next few years, she was to get used to the 
necessity of standing alone against the world in 
more ways than one : and she was also to rise to 
the duty of standing alone for the world, until the 
Christian world awoke to help her. As certain as 
it is that there were years — at the beginning of 
this century — in which our country alone stem- 
med the desolating despotism of Hapoleon, until 
nation after nation awoke not at her call but by 
her deeds ; so certain it is that at the beginning 
of this century she alone, with anything to be 
called a national enthusiasm, stemmed the torrent 
of a thousand wrongs ; negro slavery, the cruel 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


275 


miseries of the mad in lunatic asylums, of the un- 
fortunate and guilty in prisons, ignorance and dark- 
ness in Christendom and in heathendom, until 
nation after nation arose at the light of her shining, 
and the whole world is warmer and brighter for 
it, down to its darkest comers. 

And equally certain is it that these philanthro- 
pic movements began not as the silent spreading 
of morning, or as the gradual, insensible diffusion 
of an atmosphere, but by the honest, hearty, some- 
times blundering and ungraceful struggles against 
the stream of a few earnest Christian men and 
women, not a few of whom lived at Clapham. 

Whatever else the religious life at Clapham was 
or failed to be, it was hearty, healthy, helpful — not 
occupied with its own sensations, but with its 
work ; using its strength, steadily and joyfully, in 
“ going about doing good.” “ Doing good ” was 
the aim, the motto of the school. “ Being good ” 
no doubt should come first; but the “ doing” and 
the “ being ” are so intertwined that it is not al- 
ways easy to see which begins ; and it is easy to 
see that towards the “ being ” few means are so 
efficacious as the “ doing.” Nor is “ doing good” 
a propensity I think likely to be at all generally 
pushed to a dangerous extreme ; although talking 
about it certainly may. 

Those first weeks at Clapham shine back on me 
like one of Cuyp’s sunny landscapes. They were 
spent in a golden haze of piety, philanthropy, pros- 
perity, and personal petting of myself. My cous- 


276 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ins could never make enough of me. They were 
much given to superlatives, not from exaggeration, 
but from a certain glow through which they saw 
things and people. The boys accepted me as a 
kind of younger sister, with a variety which was 
piquant ; and, in their way, were as good to me as 
the girls. Happily (although I believe to Mrs. 
Danescombe’s disappointment), no thoughts of 
matrimony intruded themselves. Indeed, people 
were not in the habit of falling in love with me, 
as they were with Claire. The only persons who 
made that mistake in those days, were two elderly 
gentlemen, one of whom had an idea that I should 
devote myself efficiently to his eleven children, 
while the other considered that I reminded him of 
his first wife, an elderly lady recently departed; 
and a young curate, who, I believe, thought 1 
should be a mother to him and his parish. On 
the contrary, people were in the habit of confiding 
to me their love affairs, as if I had been a venera- 
ble and indulgent grand-motherly person of sev- 
enty. I took it as a compliment, this being a pre- 
rogative of Loveday Benbow’s, although it did 
seem beginning rather early. 

The first Sunday at Clapham was a decided 
novelty to me. Instead of every one rising a little 
later in homage to the day of rest, every one was 
down half-an-hour earlier to begin what, to my 
cousins, was the busiest day in the week. 

There was an amicable contest among my cous- 
ins which should have possession of me to intro- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


277 


duce me to her own special field of work. They 
all taught in Sunday-schools — Hatty, the class of 
young women in the school belonging to the church 
they attended: Matty, a class of infants in the 
same school ; and Phoebe, a class of boys in a new 
school recently opened in a very poor and neglect- 
ed district, which had sprung up like a fungus, 
with its crowded, ill-drained little houses, at some 
distance from the classic groves of Clapham, in a 
ragged outskirt of the great city. 

To me, strange as it seems, Sunday-schools 
were altogether a new and unknown institution. 
Ho one had thought of establishing one in Abbot’s 
Weir. With some reluctance I had to confess it. 
We had not even a day school, except a few col- 
lections of little ones, in scattered cottages, on a 
very limited scale as to numbers and instruction, 
kept by a few old women, chosen on the principle 
Oberlin superseded among his mountains, “ too old 
to keep the goats, and therefore set to keep the 
children.” 

“ Ho Sunday-school ! ” exclaimed a cousinly 
chorus. “ What can the children do ? and what 
can you do with Sunday ? ” 

I supposed the good people taught their own 
children, as best they could, and the indifferent 
people let their children do what they liked. Of 
the bad people I could give no account. I had 
not met them ; they seemed to keep out of the 
way. And as to how we spent Sunday? We 
went to church, and sat in the garden, and read 


278 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


good books, and, above all, had long talks with my 
father. 

“ But, dear cousin Bride,” said Phoebe, “ the 
bad people generally do keep out of the way, don’t 
you think ? They have lost their way, you know. 
So we have to go out of the way to find them. 
And we have so many days to read good books 
in.” 

It was a new view to me. 

If ever “false witness” was borne against our 
neighbor,” it is in the accusation that the “ evan- 
gelical party ” were supremely occupied with “ sav- 
ing their own souls.” They might, some of them, 
have narrow and shallow ideas of what “ salvation ” 
means (which of us has conceptions of that great 
word, deep and broad enough ?), but at their own 
souls they certainly did not stop ; laboring to save 
other people’s souls was of the very essence of their 
religion. 

Whatever else they believed or disbelieved 
they believed most really that they had in their 
possession a remedy for the sins and sorrows of 
the whole world ; and it was their duty and their 
delight to bestow and apply it; sometimes, no 
doubt, not discriminatingly or successfully. Have 
we found yet the school of spiritual medicine 
whose diagnosis is perfect, or whose treatment 
never fails ? 

The bright faces of my cousins did a large pro- 
portion of their evangelizing work, bringing sun- 
shine wherever they came. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


279 


Hatty’s class of young women surprised me a 
little by tlie spruceness and fashionableness of 
their attire. Many of them were dressmakers 
and young shopworn en. But there was no mis- 
taking the intelligent interest in the young faces 
gathered around the table where they read the 
Bible together, while she endeavored to make it 
plain to them, by a system of “ references” which 
was altogether new to me ; no doubt, not always 
involving a very discriminating study of the differ- 
ent authors and books, but securing a familiar 
acquaintance with great scriptural revealed truths, 
in those inimitable words of the English Bible 
which would come back to the learners in many 
an after-hour of sorrow and pain and bewilder- 
ment, when none but familiar words would be 
able to penetrate the heart. 

Matty’s “ babies” were, however, my especial 
delight. Here the aid of art was not despised. 
There were pictures, not exactly after the old 
masters, but very brilliant and attractive, of little 
Samuel, to whom God spoke, and of the boy 
Joseph, and of Ruth among the corn-fields, and of 
the child Saviour in the manger, and the good 
Shepherd carrying the lambs. There were songs 
about “ busy bees,” and “early blossoms,” and 
“ twinkling stars,” and about the manger at Beth- 
lehem, and the “little children” on whom the 
merciful hands were laid, and the fold where lit- 
tle lambs were safely folded, by which a thousand 
tender touches of “the Creed of Creeds” were 


280 AGAINST THE STREAM. 

sung and shone into the hearts of the little ones 
in tender tones and tints they would no more lose 
from the memory of the heart, than their mother’s 
voice or their mother’s kisses. 

Whatever might elsewhere have been dry or 
over “ doctrinal” in the creed, had for the chil- 
dren to be made living and tender and human. 
With them, at least, there was no danger of the 
gracious meaning of the Incarnation being for- 
gotten. 

But the work of Phoebe, the youngest of my 
cousins, who, according to her father, had the 
talent of finding out impracticable people to be 
reformed, interested me most of all. 

With her I went, in the afternoon, to the 
people who lived, in every sense, “ out of the 
way,” and accordingly had to be sought. 

The other Sunday school was already an estab- 
lished institution. The children came to it as a 
matter of course. They were orderly and well- 
dressed, and naturally, therefore, more disposed to 
take the teaching as a matter of course. Many 
of the parents also were in the employment, in 
one way or another, of the rich people around, 
and they had thus a hereditary habit of orthodoxy, 
respectfulness, and respectability. But Phoebe’s 
school was still experimental. It was a room in 
an alley, in which it was by no means a matter of 
course for the inhabitants to do anything they 
ought to do, or not to do anything they ought not 
to do, and in which very few were disposed as a 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


281 


matter of habit to be either respectful or respect- 
able. 

She could not well hav$ gone there, but for 
the protection of two of her brothers who accom- 
panied us. 

The little persons to be influenced had a most 
real and independent personality of their own, 
and the influence over them had therefore to be 
real and personal. 

If they were not interested, they made no 
polite pretensions of appearing to be. Uneduca- 
ted, indeed, they were not. In their own narrow 
line their education had been terribly complete, 
only unfortunately in the wrong direction. 

They knew far more of “ life” and the “ world,” 
the youngest of them, than my cousin Matty, 
brought up in the sunny oasis of Clapliam. With 
intelligence preternaturally sharpened, like that 
of wild animals, in all that concerned themselves, 
acute, sagacious, cunning, because suspicious of 
traps, acute as one of those sharp-eyed terriers of 
their own, which Phoebe had such difficulty in 
keeping out of the school, in detecting an adver- 
sary’s weak point, — and trained to look on all 
human beings, especially well-dressed human be- 
ings, as adversaries, — it was not in the direction 
of a contest of wits that my gentle cousin could 
cope with them. 

Her power was that she had something alto- 
gether new, terribly, gloriously new, to bring 
them. She brought them love, and she brought 


282 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


them hope. At first, apparently, the whole thing 
was regarded, in the alley, by the gloomily dis- 
posed as an insolent invasion, and by the cheer- 
fully disposed as a practical joke, which they 
returned by breaking the windows with brickbats. 
But by degrees, as one by one awoke to the fact 
that she and her brothers really cared for them, 
cared that they should grow better, and do better, 
and be all that is meant among those who are but 
too obviously “ lost,” by being “ saved,” a little 
band of chivalrous defenders gathered about her, 
always ready to execute summary Lynch law on 
any of their companions who presumed to create a 
disturbance. 

That afternoon she had to rescue a victim who 
was being liberally “ punched ” for not “ holding 
his jaw.” 

And when we came to the closing hymn, and 
the poor fellows shouted out a chorus about “ sweet 
fields,” and “ living streams,” and “ Jesus Shepherd 
of the sheep,” these innocent pastoral images alto- 
gether overcame me. 

To these outcasts to whom the world had de 
nied all the innocent joys of home, Christianity, 
through a woman’s words, was bringing childhood, 
for the first time. These little ones, hardened from 
the cradle, were now learning to come as little 
children, (children for the first time in the new life,) 
to the Master’s feet, to the Saviour’s arms, to the 
King’s kingdom. And looking across to Piers, I 
saw that he also was not a little moved. 


, AGAINST THE STREAM. 


283 


These teachings were in the intervals of the 
church services. 

The church services themselves also had in them 
much that was very new to me. 

In the first place there were distinct Christian 
hymns, altogether an unknown institution in Ab- 
bot’s W eir church, except at Easter and Christmas, 
when Eeuben Pengelly, with an especially radiant 
face, used to perform “Hark, the herald angels 
sing,” and “ Jesus Christ is risen to-day.” We had 
also occasionally an anthem at Abbot’s Weir, with 
violins and bass-viols, but the whole performance 
was considered as a specialty of the choir. 

It moved me therefore, particularly when the 
whole congregation, with soft united voices, sang 
“Jesus, lover of my soul,” and — 

“ O Lord, my best desire fulfil. 

And belp me to resign 
Life, health, and comfort to thy will. 

And let that will be mine.” 

Both hymns were familiar to me ; the first from 
Eeuben’s singing it to us in the Foundry-yard, 
from the days when he used to carry Piers about in 
his arms among the silent machinery on Sunday 
afternoons ; the second, being his favorite Cowper’s, 
my father used to make me very often say to him. 

They brought all home before me ; Eeuben and 
the sabbatical stillness of the old Foundry-yard, the 
Stone parlor fire on winter evenings, the arbor 
at the top of the garden on sunny summer after- 
noons. 


284 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


All home, and all heaven; those “kindred 
points/’ which so often meet in the heart with 
overwhelming power, through the early associa- 
tions of the simplest hymns ! 

The preaching was quite as new to me as the 
hymns. In the first place it was preaching. 
Hitherto I had heard nothing but meditations or 
essays. But this was a proclamation, a message, a 
speaking direct from heart to heart. 

At this distance of time I Qannot in the least 
remember the subject, the words spoken — perhaps 
they might not bear acute criticism ; but I re- 
member as distinctly as if it were yesterday the 
impression on my own heart. 

A message from God, from the Father, from 
my Father, from the Saviour, to me, searching 
into my heart w r hat I was loving, searching into 
my life how I was living, making me feel how 
poor my life was, making me see how rich it ought 
to be, bringing God before me, bringing me be- 
fore God. 

It moved me much. 

I felt too much to speak, when I came out of 
church. But whatever emotions my dear cousins 
experienced were not wont to express themselves 
in silence. The Quaker element was not strong at 
Cousin Crichton’s. ^ 

“You enjoyed it, Cousin Bride,” said Hatty 
and Matty simultaneously. 

“ I was not thinking exactly about enjoying. 
It searched quite down into one’s heart ! ” I said. 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


285 


They were satisfied. 

“ It was very good/’ said Hatty, “ but it was 
not one of the most striking. It was only the 
curate, you know.” 

“ You should hear Mr. Cecil, or dear old Mr. 
Hew ton, or” — and she went through a long string 
of celebrities whose names I, and perhaps a fickle 
world also, have forgotten. 

But the comparative anatomy of sermons was 
a science altogether beyond me. 

The Sunday always concluded with a family 
gathering at supper, when the spirits of all the 
family seemed to rise with especial elasticity after 
the day’s work. Hever was there more innocent 
glee at Cousin Crichton’s ; never were more good 
things said, or things not very brilliant in them- 
selves, made to sparkle more in the glow of that 
bright home, than at the Sunday suppers. 

But that first evening I was too much moved 
and too tired with all the day’s happy excitements 
to be able to enter into it. 

I had a headache, and was suffered to take ref- 
uge in little Martha’s room. 

“ I never heard a sermon, you know, Cousin 
Bride,” said she, when I said a little to her of 
what I had felt. 

“ And I have only heard one , Cousin Martha,” 
I replied. 

“ You have no sermons at Abbot’s Weir, dearest 
Bride ? ” she exclaimed, evidently looking on us as 
a case for a new missionary society. 


286 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


“ Not sermons that speak to the heart like that,” 
I said. “ Of course Uncle Fyford reads us what is 
called a sermon. But preaching is something very 
different.” 

Preaching seemed to me that evening such a 
glorious word, and a pulpit such a royal place ! 

St. Peter and the three thousand who were 
smitten to the heart at J erusalem, and St. Paul’s 
“ Woe unto me if I preach not ” — if he had, indeed, 
had such a message to give, seemed to me quite 
comprehensible. 

I pitied Martha very much that she could not 
go to church, or teach in Sunday schools. I sup- 
pose she felt it by something in my looks or tones, 
for she said — 

“ Yet I do get sermons even here, Cousin Bride, 
from so many things, from everything, sometimes ; 
from the fire and from the trees waving in the un- 
seen wind, from the stars ; if sermons mean mes- 
sages from God.” 

“Yes,” I said, “you have learned to listen .” 
And I told her about Loveday, of whom she always 
delighted to hear. “ But oh, Martha,” I said, “ it 
is these plain strong words piercing into the hearts 
that have not learned to listen. Surely if men go 
on preaching like this, the whole world will turn 
and listen, and love, before long ! ” 

She hoped it would. She thought it must. 
The news was so good, the need so great. 

And in that glow of hope I went to sleep that 
night in my princely bedroom, planning and dream- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


287 


ing all manner of philanthropic enterprises for 
Abbot’s Weir and the world — day schools, Sunday 
schools, missionary societies ; and feeling not a doubt 
that the result would be such as Abbot’s Weir and 
the world had never known before. 

It was an era of youth and hope, and Clapham 
was a land of hope. A thousand good works were 
beginning, and from each of them the founders 
expected a new era for the world. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 



N looking at the little packet Madame 
des Ormes had given me, I was a little 
alarmed to find that it was intended for 
no less a personage than onr local digni- 
tary, the Countess of Abbot’s Weir, whose town 
house was in Cavendish Square ; and that it was 
to be delivered into no hands but her own. I 
suppose the Marquise had vague ideas concern- 
ing the size of London, and concerning the awful- 
ness of our distinctions of rank. 

Cousin Barbara could give me no light on the 
subject. Cousin Crichton and his family “ dwelt 
among their own people,’’ and had far too much 
simplicity and self-respect to wish to attain, 
through any irregular by-paths, religious or secular, 
to a social level above their own. 

I wrote to Claire, therefore, to explain what I 
could of the difficulty ; and we were waiting for 
the reply, when one morning a coach, a little be- 
yond the usual sober and subdued splendor of 
Clapham, swept round to the porch. 

In a few moments Mrs. Beckford-Glanvil was 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


289 


announced, and a lady sailed into the room, in 
whom I recognized at once the form in which 
Clapham had embodied itself to Amice. 

There was a certain overpowering atmosphere 
of opulence about her, a pomp in the solidity of 
her tread, a sonorousness about the rustle of her 
silks ; you felt instinctively that she was a repre- 
sentative figure ; the wealth of the new wild West 
seemed represented in her sables, the wealth of 
the ancient East in her cachemires and her aro- 
matic perfumes, the whole “haut commerce” of 
England in the magnificence of her presence ; the 
whole “ petite noblesse’’ of England in the conde- 
scension of her courtesy. She was not only a 
Beckford, but a Beckford-Glanvil, and not only 
a Beckford-Glanvil but a Beckford-Glanvil conse- 
crated and further illuminated by Clapham. 

She saluted Cousin Barbara with a prolonged 
pressure of the hand, my cousins with a general 
gracious acknowledgment, and me with a partic- 
ular and rather embarrassing inspection. 

“ Our niece Amice has written to her cousin 
Cecilia about you, Miss Danescombe,” she said. 
“She is dying to see you ; but to-day there was 
the music-master, the poor Chevalier d’Este, and 
the French mistress, the Comtesse de Montmo- 
rency, and the Italian master, the Marchese Bor- 
gia; really, Mrs. Crichton, there are so many 
refugees it seems a charity to take lessons from, 
one’s children have scarcely leisure for friendship 


19 


290 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


or society, or charity, or anything. How do you 
manage such things?” 

“ I do not manage at all,” said Cousin Barbara, 
which was certainly a correct account of her mode 
of government. “ The girls seem to enjoy every- 
thing, and so to find time for everything.” 

“ Certainly, your sons and daughters seem to 
have time for everything,” Mrs. Glanvil resumed. 
“ I hear of them in the Sunday schools, at the Dis- 
trict Visiting Society, in the Missionary Collections 
— everywhere. Quite models ! I am always hold- 
ing them up to my poor dear Cecilia and to my 
sons. But then we all know, Mrs. Crichton, as 

dear Mr. V said so beautifully last Sunday, 

4 Paul may plant, and Apollos water. 5 And my 
poor Arabella, you know, married so very early ; 
and her husband, Sir Frederic, so idolizes her that 
he will not suffer her to enter a school or a cottage. 
You know there is danger of infection ; those poor 
creatures are not so clean and careful as one could 
wish. How do you escape ? ” 

“We do not always escape,” Cousin Barbara 
replied. “ But my children have good health, 
thank God, and they take care.” 

“ Ah, some people are hardier than others. 
My poor darlings are delicate plants, Mrs. Crichton ; 
a little too tenderly, nurtured, perhaps; rather too 
much hot-house plants, I fear.” 

But she said this in a way which decidedly im- 
plied the superiority of the hot-house products to 
the hardy natives of the open air. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


291 


“ Our girls are not hot-house plants, certainly,” 
said Cousin Barbara, a little nettled, “ and 1 trust 
they never will be.” 

“ But talking of hot-houses,” continued Mrs. 
Glanvil, “ your own conservatory is really beauti- 
ful.” 

Cousin Barbara rose and led her into it. 

For a minute or two the murmured “gorgeous,” 
“ superb,” “ really, quite a novelty,” from the 
conservatory which opened out of the drawing- 
room, reminded me of the dread of Amice’s 
childhood, of growing up and having to perform 
show-woman to her grandmother’s green-house. 
“We have five gardeners — the head man a Scotch- 
man,” was the conclusion — “but really nothing 
quite equal to some of these exotics.” 

While praiseworthy, it was evidently also a 
little presumptuous in Cousin Crichton, who only 
kept two gardeners, to reach this eminence. 

We returned to politics and philanthropy. 

With regard to the slave-trade she confessed 
that she and Mr. Glanvil did sometimes think Mr. 
Wilberforce a little unreasonable. Of course every 
one agreed it was doomed ultimately, but there 
were important interests not to be neglected ; and 
wise regulation and discouragement leading in the 
course of years to gradual abolition, was what 
many sensible men thought the safest and most 
practicable scheme. 

Cousin Barbara quoted Mr. Fox’s words that 
“ with regard to the regulation of the slave-trade, 


292 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


he knew of no sncli thing as the regulation of rob- 
bery and murder.” 

Mrs. Glanvil said women must leave these prac- 
tical questions to men, and changed the subject. 

The peace with' France was beginning to be- 
come a general topic. 

Mrs. Beckford-G-lanvil had much information 
on the subject “from private sources,” no mere 
newspaper reports, but things Mr. Beckford-Glan- 
vil had heard at the House of Commons, which 
she liberally communicated in confidential tones, 
with a suggestion that perhaps at present “ it had 
better not go further ” — opinions of cabinet min- 
isters and various great men and honorable women 
whom they had met at various dinners; sayings 
even of a Higher Personage still ; what Mr. Pitt 
intended, and Mr. Fox thought, and what His 
Majesty had said in confidence. 

She was floating away in the midst of this tide 
of greatness, when the door opened and the butler 
announced “ The Countess of Abbot’s Weir,” and 
a tall, majestic looking woman in deep mourning 
advanced towards Cousin Barbara. 

“You will excuse my coming without intro- 
duction, Mrs. Crichton,” she said. “ I had a mes- 
sage from a dear friend of mine, Madame des 
Ormes, through Miss Danescombe. It is a pleas- 
ure to escape from London,” she continued, looking 
at the conservatory, a to have a glimpse of the 
country, gardens, and flowers.” 

If she had sought far and wide she could not 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


293 


have lighted on a compliment sweeter to the heart 
of Clapham than to call it “country,” as I had 
learned by my cousin Crichton’s face when in my 
first inexperience I had called it “wonderfully 
pretty for a town.” 

Cousin Barbara introduced me. 

She took my hand, and held it a little, so 
kindly. 

“ You have done much,” she said softly, “ to 
make my poor friend’s hard fate easier. She can- 
not write enough about you and yours. You must 
tell me about them all, and that sweet little Claire 
who loves you so much.” 

How at home she made me feel, with her gra- 
cious easy ways, and with the dear familiar names 1 

We had all been gradually freezing in the icy 
circle of that aggressive self-consciousness, which 
made all the world seem for the moment as if it 
had forgotten the Copernican system, and were 
perversely revolving round the house of Beckford- 
Glanvil, and which set one, "(or at least set me,) on 
a foolish course of inward self-assertion, enumera- 
ting my own claims to consideration, and recalling 
all the distinguished people I had known or might 
have known; crystallizing us generally into sep- 
arate spikes and blocks of ice. 

And now all at once, as if with the touch of a 
sunbeam, we recovered and began to flow together. 
It was certainly not merely the fact of the rank 
of the countess, (although doubtless it is one of 
the privileges of mountains to allay the pretensions 


294 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


of the little hills,) it was that she was “ at leisure 
from herself,” and simply by virtue of her sweet 
graciousness set us free from the spell under which 
we had been growing rigid. In a few minutes I 
found myself talking to her about Madame des 
Ormes and Claire, with that certainty of her really 
caring which makes intercourse easy and natural. 

I rose to fetch the little packet. Mrs. Beckford- 
Glanvil also rose, said again how her Cecilia was 
longing to see her cousin’s friend, and hoped I 
would fix a day to spend with her, and that my 
cousins would accompany me. 

The prospect was appalling, but Cousin Barba- 
ra having rescued me by saying we would soon do 
ourselves the pleasure of returning Mrs. Beckford- 
Glanvil’s call, I was set free to execute my com- 
mission. 

When I returned the countess was quietly talk- 
ing to Cousin Barbara on the universal topic of 
the peace. But her information was by no means 
so assured as that of Mrs. Beckford-Glanvil. The 
earl, she said frankly, had never liked the war, 
and she had always thought it one of the finest 
things Mr. Wilberforce had ever done to stand out 
for peace against his political friends. 

“ It is so much easier,” she said, “ to differ from 
the whole world than from one’s own party.” 

But she risked no other name by quoting it in 
support of any opinion ; and of the king, when 
there happened to be occasion to mention his name, 
she spoke with the far-off loyalty of an ordinary 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 295 

subject who had never seen his Majesty nearer 
than in a procession. 

“ But there is one gentleman at Clapham,” she 
said, “ to whom I had once the honor of being in- 
troduced, and whose house I should greatly like to 
see. No doubt you can tell me. Mr. Granville 
Sharpe. He has always seemed to me like one of 
the old knights before the ideal of chivalry was 
spoilt. The grandson of an archbishop and brother 
of an archdeacon, contentedly serving his appren- 
ticeship to a mercer ; and then, alone, turning the 
whole law of England, corrupted by false prece- 
dent, back to its true, older precedents of freedom. 
Then afterwards, (which seems to me as noble 
as anything,) giving up his appointment in the 
Treasury and his income, rather than be involved in 
sending out ammunition for what he considered the 
unj ust and unbrotherly war against America. Con- 
tent to be alone against the world, for truth and 
justice, such men end in bringing the world round. 
I think there was never a nobler English gentle- 
man.” 

My heart beat quick, and I felt my face glow- 
ing crimson at the praises of my hero, with the 
homage of my cousins to whom I had not been 
quite satisfied. 

Cousin Barbara smiled, and said very kindly 
to me, — 

“ Bride, you know Mr. Granville Sharpe's 
house, if any one does.” 

“ Will you get into the carriage and show me ?” 


296 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


the countess said ; “ and will your cousin come 
with us ? And will you let me drive them home 
with me, Mrs. Crichton, that we may have a long 
talk over our common friends and our common 
heroes ? If you can, I should like it so much ; the 
earl is away, and it will cheer my solitary evening ; 
and I promise to send them back safely in the 
evening.” 

It was impossible to refuse, and Hatty and I 
spent a most happy day at Cavendish Square see- 
ing all kinds of interesting ancestral portraits, and 
relics, and autographs, and feeling as if we were 
personally drinking draughts of delight at the very 
sources of English history. 

Simple and natural her life seemed, as ours at 
Abbot’s Weir, or my cousins’ at Clapham, in the 
great world of London, which was her native place, 
or among their tenants in the country whom she 
loved to help ; its deep places, simply such as mine 
or Loveday’s, or Reuben Pengelly’s. Into these 
depths she gave me one glimpse, which drew my 
heart to her. Taking me into her dressing-room, 
she drew back a veil from the portrait of a lovely 
child about the age of Claire. 

“ Last year she was with us,” she said. “ Tell 
Claire. They used to play together in old days in 
France.” 

And on taking leave she kissed me, and said she 
must see me again at Abbot’s Weir. 

The visit to Mrs. Beckford-Glanvil could not 
be evaded, but the good nature of my cousins, 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


297 


great as it was, could not stretch so far as to 
accompany me. All they would concede was to 
attend a drawing-room missionary meeting in the 
evening, at which several of the Clapham lions 
were to be present, and a “native” of some orien- 
tal country in native costume. 

Cecilia’s longing to see me was not very appar- 
ent ; hut it was the less disappointing because she 
was not demonstrative on any subject.. A kind of 
mental limpness seemed to pervade her, which 
was perhaps what her mother meant by her being 
a hot-house plant. 

In Mrs. Glanvil’s presence she said little. Her 
mother spoke for her. She was sure her dear 
Cecilia felt charmed with this, and interested in 
that ; and Cecilia did not take the trouble to dis- 
sent. Mrs. Glanvil’s own interest seemed concen- 
trated on Madame des Orrnes. 

“ It is curious,” she said, “ my mother-in-law 
did not mention her. Quite a person of distinction 
apparently. But, then, to be sure, there are so 
many foreign persons of distinction staying at this 
moment in England, that with all the princes, and 
marquises, and countesses, and chevaliers who have 
to be helped, one is quite bewildered with titles. 
Mr. Beckford-Glanvil often has to warn me that, 
after all, charity begins at home.” 

I pitied the poor patronized princes and mar- 
quises from my heart. 

“But,” I said, a little indignantly, “Madame 
des Orrnes is not in want of charity. She lives at 


298 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Abbot’s Weir because she likes to be quiet, and 
(she kindly says) because she likes us. That is 
all.” 

“ Of course, Miss Danescombe, of course. No 
one imagines a Marquise would settle in Abbot’s 
Weir from choice. I suppose the Countess of 
Abbot’s Weir knew them in better days?” 

After a time Cecilia took me into her boudoir. 
When I was alone with her she came out in a new 
light. 

To my cousin Crichtons the presence of their 
parents seemed a free atmosphere in which all 
their thoughts and hearts expanded ; to Cecilia the 
absence of her mother seemed a liberation. She 
was surprised that I liked Clapham. It seemed to 
her and her brothers the dullest place in the world. 
She supposed it was because I came out of a deeper 
depth of dulness at Abbot’s Weir. 

She seemed to me terribly tepid and old. She 
admired nothing : she hoped in nothing. She was 
“ desillusionnee ” at nineteen. The slaves she con- 
sidered only less wearisome than the anti-slavery 
people. She could not at all comprehend the fuss 
made about them. “If they were emancipated, 
they were still black and still poor, and how was 
the world to be made an agreeable place for blacks 
and poor people ? ” 

The only thing she warmed into energy about 
was her detestation of missionary meetings. Her 
sister was married and never meant to attend an- 
other in her life. “ All kinds of people brought 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


299 


into your drawing-room,” she observed, with dis- 
gust, u that at another time would not come beyond 
the servants’ hall. And my brothers say the whole 
thing is such an imposition. Converts bought at 
so much a head to come here and be shown like 
the zoological animals, and all the ladies and plat- 
forms trying who can have the newest or most 
curious. But I suppose every one must have 
amusements ; we have ours, and mamma has hers. 
I don’t think anything is very amusing ; but reli- 
gious amusements are certainly the dullest of all.” 

Piers and I had often found amusements, or try- 
ing to be amused, tiresome ; and I suppose if reli- 
gion could be brought to that level she might be 
right. 

She depressed me dreadfully. 

It was the first example I had encountered of 
that reaction from unreal enthusiasm to a cynical 
contempt, or a languid “nil admirari” which besets 
the second generation of religious parties, as far as 
they are merely parties ; the Nemesis of all unreal 
religious profession. 

Mr. Beckford-Glanvil appeared just before the 
late dinner at five o’clock. He was interesting to 
me for the sake of Abbot’s Weir and Amice, as the 
future proprietor of Court. But Mrs. Glanvil con- 
tinued to dominate the conversation. He was 
polite but impenetrable, and seemed to me rather 
to endure his wife’s social amusements than to en- 
joy them. But this is a peculiarity not limited 
to religious families. 


300 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


At dinner there was general discourse about 
Abbot’s Weir, the peace with France, and various 
political prospects, concerning which Mr. Glanvil 
was far more reticent and less informed than his 
wife. After dinner the hostess employed herself 
in impressing me with the importance of the ex- 
pected guests, and especially expatiated concerning 
Mr. Wilberforce ; how he “ maintained religion in 
the eye of the world by having a large house, giv- 
ing hospitable entertainments, and indulging him- 
self in those congruities to his taste and fortune 
which became the English gentleman and the 
Christian.” 

A chill fear crept over me that I should find 
the lions of Clapham whom I was to behold that 
evening, and even Mr. Wilberforce himself, remov- 
ed far from me into that world of clothes, congrui- 
ties, proprieties, and conventionalities in which the 
“Me” and the “*Nbt me” were so inextricably 
confounded, and in which my “ Me ” always be- 
came so terribly isolated. 

Vain and foolish fears. 

That sparkling wit, lighted up from that tender 
and benevolent heart, that social genial nature 
which in all society drew its deepest glow from 
the Presence it never quitted, that natural, court- 
eous, considerate, easy, happy English gentleman, 
that lowly, loving, generous-hearted Christian man 
had not been in the room five minutes before the i 
icy spell of self-importance and self-consciousness, 
of cynicism and “nil admirari” melted away, 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


301 


unconsciously, and entirely in that genial presence. 
Every one seemed to become real and natural; 
their best, because their true selves. Everything 
in God’s creation seemed worth caring for. Every 
creature in His redeemed world seemed worth 
loving and serving. 

Before the evening ended I was quite reconcil- 
ed to Clapham, and quite inspired with its devo- 
tion to its chieftain. 






CHAPTER XIX. 

UR cousins would not hear of our return. 
As our visit was prolonged, I began to 
have pathetic letters from Abbot’s Weir. 
Amice wrote,- — 

“ You seem fairly launched into the millennium, 
for you, that is, the reign of righteousness and 
peace ; and for poor forsaken me, in the meantime 
the “ thousand years,” of pining, without you. It 
seems just that since you left ! 

“ Granny is more deaf in her discriminating 
way than ever, and more disposed to be didactic 
to me. She suspects that I have a turn for negroes 
and philanthropy, and accordingly finds and makes 
countless opportunities for depreciating philan- 
thropists and negroes. And I am horribly torn 
between the conflicting duties of 6 submitting my- 
self to my governors ’ and being 1 true in all my 
dealings ; ’ between the emotions of indignation 
against what she says, and a reverent tenderness 
for her. For she loves me more from year to year, 
I know ; and she would feel my crossing her will 
like a great blow from the hand she loves best in 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


303 


the world ; her will, her heart, and her opinions 
being so inextricably entangled, that nothing 
would ever persuade her my differing from her 
opinions was anything but a heartless, wilful revolt 
against her love and authority. And moreover I 
cannot help seeing, brave and resolute as she is, 
and scornfully rejecting help as ever, that she grows 
weaker as I grow stronger, so that a blow from 
me now would be like a man striking his aged 
mother. It is all terribly entangled. Come back, 
my single-hearted Bride, and walk quietly on 
through all these tangles, in your wonted way, 
scattering nets of ropes like cobwebs by merely 
going straight-forward, without an idea of what 
good you have done, of what perplexities you have 
made, or what perplexities you have unmade ! 

“ Alas for me ! I cannot help seeing and feel- 
ing all round, feeling every one’s excuses and diffi- 
culties so strongly that I seem unable not only to 
go boldly forward, but to go on at all, and can only 
sit still, and let the net coil and knot itself about 
me tighter and tighter. 

“ Oh for the days of Moses, or of St. Paul, or 
of the Crusaders ! And yet I suppose Moses had 
some conflict of doubts as to abandoning Pharaoh’s 
daughter ; and perhaps St. Paul as to Gamaliel ; 
and perhaps even my crusading ancestor as to the 
wife, and babes, and “ villeins,” he left at home. 

ce But I am trying to listen, Bride, as our Love- 
day says, and sometimes I think when the call 


304 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


comes I could count it all joy to follow, anywhere, 
in any way. 

“ But can it have come while 1 was asleep f ” 

And Claire wrote : — 

“ I long for you always. Is London, then, af- 
ter all, as strong in its attractions as our poor Paris 
of the old days ? Or are you so strong in your at- 
tractions that London will not yield you hack to 
us ? Yes, that is it. The Countess writes to my 
mother in ecstasies about you. You are a sweet 
violet, a fresh breath from the moors, a demoiselle 
de la haute noblesse by nature, — a creature whose 
natural naturalness no Court could spoil. All this 
she says or means, when her words are translated. 

“ As if we needed to be told all that ! I call it 
an impertinence to bestow all these beautiful phra- 
ses on us, as if they were anything new to us. 

“ Besides I am not so sure about the manners 
of the noblesse. There are bourgeois among the 
haute noblesse, and there are Bayards among the 
bourgeoisie. They may create equality of posses- 
sions in our poor France if they can ; but equality 
of persons never ! 

“ And here are your violets and primroses sigh- 
ing and growing pale for you ! while Reuben waits 
when he brings me your letters, like your New- 
foundland dog in his company manners trying not 
to seem solicitous for a bone. Mr. Danescombe 
grows hypocritical, and endeavors to persuade us 
and himself that he is delighted you are enjoying 
yourselves ; and Miss Loveday grows monastical, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


305 


and lectures me on the inordinate love of the crea- 
ture, until I have to contradict her from her own 
Bible, which says so much about loving fervently, 
and never a word that I can see about not loving*. 

“ Piers, no doubt, is well occupied, and forgets 
us all. That is but natural, when one has so many 
marvellous meetings, excellent and wise men, 
charming cousins, and steam-engines, to care 
about. 

“ But meantime, we, your natural enemies, are 
possessing your land. And Mr. Danescombe said 
the other day, I recited some of Cowper’s poetry 
like you ! Take care, ma cherie , when hearts are 
left too long empty, they will find themselves at 
any poor cup.” 

And Loveday wrote : — 

“ My heart is glad for you. You are learning 
by sight, on the Pestalozzian system, the best way. 
Perhaps, after all, nevertheless, one does not lose 
everything by being a little way off. At Corinth, 
you know, they were not quite clear which was the 
greater, Paul the Apostle, or Apollos.” 

And my stepmother : — 

“ I am gratified to find you are making wise use 
of such a golden opportunity. I am gratified also 
from your excellent cousins’ letters to find they 
make such amiable allowance for any little rustici- 
ties your dear father’s rather unrestrained ideas of 
liberty might have produced.” 

And ray father : — 

“My children, your cousins are all kindness. 

20 


306 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


I cannot wonder that they delight to have you, as 
much as my judgment tells me I ought. And I 
am sure you ought to stay on, although I cannot 
wish it as I should, and as they so kindly seem to 
do. We grow miserly over the years, as there are 
fewer in the heap before us. But I think your 
home will be none the less dear to you for all the 
luxuries of your cousins’. You have a love for 
helping to bear other people’s burdens, my chil- 
dren, inherited from one better than I am. And 
God knows, He and you and every one have made 
the burdens of life light to me. 

“ Your letters glow, as if they came out of some 
tropical land. You are among those who are help- 
ing to lift off many burdens from mankind. And 
I trust you may bring us back some good lessons. 
We in Abbot’s Weir have scarcely done all we 
might.’’ 

That letter of my father’s made me passionately 
long to return, not from its words so much as for 
the absence of any of the dry little sayings which 
were natural to him, when no weight was on him. 
And I could not bear the humility. Clapham was 
not better than he was. 

However, engagements had been made for us 
until June ; and through May, at all events, we 
must stay. 

Moreover, at the period when that letter arriv- 
ed, I was a little indignant with Clapham on more 
grounds than one. I had expressed a wish to see 
the chapel in which John Wesley had preached. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


307 


Cousin Crichton had replied by some rather dis- 
paraging remarks about the Methodists, — excellent 
people, he admitted, in their way, in their day, and 
in their place, but evidently not exactly in his way, 
or in his day, or at Clapliam. Also, one of my 
cousins (it was dear good Phoebe the reformer) had 
said to me something that offended me about Piers. 
I cannot remember the words. They were, I know, 
very circumspect and very kind ; but they implied 
that Piers was not up to the Clapham standard of 
religious experience. “ He made so little response, 
one could not be sure whether he cared ! ” 

Piers ! — who would have thrown himself into 
the water to rescue any one, while others were 
wringing their hands on the shore ! Piers, who had 
in old days denied himself what he most cared about 
for the slaves, or any one in trouble, while I only 
shed tears — easy, idle tears ! I was very indignant, 
and as that was the first time I had appeared in 
that character at Clapham, my cousins were propor- 
tionately astonished. 

I said they were as bad as the people who would 
not tolerate any one if he lisped, or said sh instead 
of s ; that they would not have recognized St. An- 
drew, or Nathanael, or any of the dear quiet saints, 
who would not protest and talk ; — that they would 
have believed in Apollos more than in St. Paul. I 
don’t know what vehement things I did not say, 
blending in my defence Piers and the Methodists. 

I said there was the Age of the Heroes who 
fought the dragons and founded the cities, and the 


308 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Age of the settled, comfortable citizens, who lived 
in the cities and kept festivals over the skeletons of 
the slain dragons ; that King David had his “ first 
three,” and then his thirties, and his thousands ; 
that Clapham and its citizens and its festivals were 
excellent, hut where would Clapham have been, 
unless the Wesleys and Whitefield had faced the 
mobs of heathen miners and colliers, led on some- 
times by worse than heathen rich people, had drawn 
the colliers, out of their dens and holes, and con- 
quered them for Christ — risking life over and over 
again, “ being destitute, afflicted, tormented hunt- 
ed out of the church they loved — for too much love 
to her lost children ; hunted down by lost multi- 
tudes for determining to save them from their sins ; 
avenging themselves on the church by bringing 
back to her countless of her lost, to inspire her with 
new life, — avenging themselves on the savage mob 
by bringing back thousands of them to God. I 
said it was not true that the Wesleys were separa- 
tists. They had been hunted out for beginning 
the very work the Church was now waking up to 
share. England had driven the loyal colonists in 
America, into becoming a nation, and the Church 
of England had driven the loyal and orthodox 
Methodists into becoming a sect. And things done 
were not to be undone. Nations were not so easi- 
ly to be caressed or chastised back into being colo- 
nies. 

I said it was excellent to preach good things to 
reverent hearers in orderly pulpits, and to con- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


309 


tend in great meetings against great wrongs ; but 
that it was something more to go alone after one 
lost sheep into perilous wildernesses, and to face 
alone for Christ’s love a crowd of angry men ready 
to stone you. 

I said that the men and women who welcomed 
shipwrecked men to the shore, and fed and clothed 
and attended them — were dear and good and 
Christian ; but that the one man who swam through 
the surf with the rope to the wreck was more , and 
his work such as the shipwrecked men and those 
who helped them should never forget. 

I said, finally, that Piers was better ten thou- 
sand times than I was, who was always imposing 
on people just because I had a miserable, un-Eng- 
lish way of saying out all I felt, while he never 
could say a tithe of what he felt, and so did it. I 
said I did think there might be too much reli- 
gious talk, and I was sure there might be too much 
religious judging ; and that there were good peo- 
ple in the world at other places besides Clapham, 
and there had been in other ages before 1801, and 
in other churches besides our own. Indeed I haz- 
arded the daring remark that in some ways I 
thought Abbot’s Weir a more roomy state of ex- 
istence than Clapham, with glimpses into a wider 
world and a longer past. 

And I said I did sometimes wish that every 
one at Clapham was not so terribly rich ; and that 
if the apostles, even^ had had to live among them, 
I thought after a little while it must have been 


310 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


hard for them not to have felt it a sin of omission 
not to have some thousands a year. 

Cousin Phoebe was evidently a little tempted 
to admit me among her company of impracticable 
people to be reformed. She said very good-hu- 
moredly, with a funny little buttoning of her lips, 
u that, at all events, there was no danger of mis- 
taking me for one of the silent saints.” 

But they had all the sunniest and sweetest 
tempers. Cousin Harriet at once adopted me as 
one of her “ uncomfortable people to comfort ; ” 
and Cousin Matilda, the most open to new con- 
victions and new admirations of any of them, 
generously conceded that she did think, from my 
descriptions, Abbot’s Weir must have some of the 
best people possible in it. 

And afterwards, dear little Martha having 
heard of the little passage of arms, put her thin 
arms round me and said, — 

“ I like you for being in a little fury about your 
brother, Cousin Bride ; for I think there never was 
any one, any boy, I mean, so kind and helpful and 
gentle. He saw why it was my head was a little 
uncomfortable on this couch, and he made me that 
wooden support, you know to keep up the pillows. 
I do wish he could have been a doctor ! He says 
so little and does so quietly and exactly the right 
thing. It is such a rest ! He wishes it too ; at 
least, he did wish it so much. But of course you 
know.” 

I did know. But she seemed to know more. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


311 


The little sufferer had attracted out of him the 
secret he so rarely spoke of, of the studies and 
ambitions he had freely relinquished without ever 
letting my father know he had sacrificed anything 
— to be able to help him in his business, and that 
Francis might go to the University. 

But Piers was the most trying of all. For 
when I told him of these fears of Phoebe’s (being 
anxious moreover to draw out of a little cloud 
of reserve and gravity which I had observed on 
him lately), he only said — “Perhaps she is more 
than half right, Bride. I am sure I am not what 
I want to be ; and will be, I trust,” he added, softly. 

This humility of Piers, and now of my father’s 
in this letter, were too provoking ; most especially 
so, because they really meant it. 

Humility was not precisely the characteristic of 
my cousin Crichtons, or of Clapham, as I saw it, ex- 
cept of dear Cousin Barbara, who was not “ gifted” 
in any way, she said, and greatly marvelled at and 
delighted in the powers of utterance of her daugh- 
ters. In secret, no doubt, they thought humbly 
of themselves ; but then I did not see them in 
secret ; the diaries which, no doubt they all kept, 
not being yet published. But in public the whole 
active, benevolent, flourishing community admired 
each other too sincerely and too demonstratively 
not to see reflected in themselves some of the glow 
they shed on others. They did not blow trumpets 
before themselves, but they did liberally serenade 
each other. 


312 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


And I considered that Piers and my father had 
been over-impressed by those triumphant clarions. 

However it was only when summoned by such 
self-depreciation or such suspicions, to little counter 
trumpetings of my own, that I lost the joyous sense 
of the stir and the victory around me, and left for 
a minute that Gulf Stream of love and life which 
swept me on in its full warm tides, and swept 
summer to so many shores. 




CHAPTER XX. 


LA IRE wrote of the shady violet-banks 
and primroses in the dear old fields and 
lanes around Abbot’s Weir, and of the 
carpets of blue hyacinths in the woods 
by the river. 

At Clapham, too, it was May ; and what May 
meant at Clapham was indeed as unknown to Ab- 
bot’s Weir as the sudden rush of floral life in the 
springs of Lapland. 

Externally, however contemptuously Amice 
might speak of its attractions, Clapham had its own 
abundant share of the glories of spring. Ranges 
of real country-fields, and of useful farm buildings, 
(picturesque, if picturesque at all, by necessity or 
accident, not by self-conscious design,) lay between 
the Common and London. 

Every garden overflowed with treasures of blos- 
som into the roads, laburnums, “ dropping wells of 
fire,” thorns, pink and white, lilacs, and, in the re- 
gions around, avenues of horse-chestnut, like pro- 
cessions awaiting some joyous bridal, — trees un- 
known to Abbot’s Weir, embosomed in its ancient 



314 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


oak-woods. And in sunny nooks, under those wall- 
ed paradises, beds of sweet violets, crocuses, clusters 
of anemones, embracing almost the whole chord of 
prismatic color, all blending with each other in rich 
brocades and “ shots” of interwoven tints, before 
the “ ribbon” style of art had been invented. And 
harmonizing all, the delicious green of well-kept 
lawns, penetrating in little creeks and bays under 
the shadow of the groves and shrubberies. 

Little paradises walled in from the wilderness, 
where certainly no thorns and briars, and apparent- 
ly no serpent could enter ; between these paradises 
incessant interchanges of kindness and friendly in- 
tercourse ; and from these paradises, full of “ all 
that was pleasant to the eye or good for food,” in- 
cessant ministrations of mercy towards the wilder- 
ness which, unhappily, still existed outside, through 
ministering men and women who frankly recogni- 
zed each other as little less than angelic ; rivers of 
beneficence, flowing forth East and West and North 
and South, and u glad tidings of great joy,” sincere 
ly dearer to many of the happy dwellers than any 
treasures besides, sounding forth far and wide from 
that oasis of exceptional bliss. 

As to me, I felt often, during that May, alto- 
gether lapped in paradise, body, soul, and spirit. 

Never can I forget the effect of those May meet- 
ings since become the butts of so many witticisms, 
on me. 

Exeter Hall was not built until thirty years 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 315 

afterwards, but the human materials of Exeter 
Hall were there. 

It was the meeting of the London Missionary 
Society to which I was first taken. 

We met in Freemasons’ Hall. 

The Church Missionary Society had been es- 
tablished three years before, in 1798. The Bible 
Society, to meet a dearth of the Scriptures, to which 
all existing means of supply were entirely inade- 
quate, was instituted two years later (1803). 

The Baptist Missions had been commenced, 
with their first subscriptions of £13 2s. 6d . , and 
their one man ready for any sacrifice, William 
Carey, in 1786. 

Earliest of all in this new spring-tide, many years 
before, in 1731, the Moravian Brethren had sent 
out their first missionaries, and had sent them, ac- 
cording to their noble custom, to the most despised 
and rejected of all — the slaves in the West Indies. 

The London Missionary Society had been in 
existence five years, called into being by the dying 
request of Lady Huntingdon. It was intended to 
embrace all sections of the Christian Church. This 
original purpose has been, in a great measure, frus- 
trated, partly perhaps by the narrowness of human 
prejudice, but chiefly, I think, by the largeness of 
Divine purpose, working out that richer and deeper 
unity which is to be attained, not by a neutralizing 
mixture of all the elements in a mild and ineffective 
compound, but by a free development of all in the 
fulness of life. It was found impossible for the 


316 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


various Christian societies to work together, when 
the proclamation of the gospel of the common 
Christianity had drawn together communities of 
converts. But in those days the various societies 
not having increased to the dimensions they after- 
wards reached, there was leisure and good-will for 
each to sympathize with all. 

Accordingly my Cousin Crichton, although a 
firm and orderly churchman, took us all to the Lon- 
don Missionary Meeting. 

Those who think Christian missions have effect- 
ed nothing, would do well to consider the state of 
the world outside Christendom at the commence- 
ment of this century. 

At that time all the societies were groping 
their way in the thick darkness. 

In India, the British merchants were still stren- 
uously opposing the disturbing of the natives, and 
of their own commerce, by the introduction of 
Christianity. A year before, barred out by Eng- 
land from all her stations, Carey had landed at the 
Danish settlement at Serampore. 

When the glories of nations are seen to be not 
mile's of territory, but noble deeds and men, a radi- 
ant halo will surely be recognized around the brows 
of the brave little nation which was the first in 
Protestant Christendom to awake to the fact that 
the religion of Christ is meant for all men, and to 
open her colonies in the East and W est Indies, to 
the proclamation of His kingdom. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


317 


Except a few scattered converts of Schwarz, 
there was not a native Protestant church in India. 

The words of Carey, on his outward voyage, 
“ that Africa, for missionary work, was not far from 
England, and Madagascar very little farther,” 
seemed to us then a wild visionary speculation. 

There was not a single Christian in the Pacific 
Islands, or in Madagascar, scarcely in Africa ; not 
one in connection with the reformed churches in 
China or Japan. It was not until nearly three 
centuries after the Reformation era, that the Pro- 
testant churches awoke nationally, or collectively, 
to the fact of the existence of an outside world to 
be evangelized. 

And now at length, at the beginning of the 
century, England, “ mistress of the seas,” and 
mother of almost all the European colonies that live, 
had waked up to her great work of evangelization. 

At that time all the societies were groping their 
way in the dark ; having yet to investigate the dis- 
tinctions of heathenism, ranging from savage fetish 
worship to religions with systems more subtle than 
any European philosophies, and with sacred books 
older than the Hew Testament ; and therefore hav- 
ing yet to invent the various weapons needed to 
meet these various antagonists. 

All the battle-fields had to be reconnoitred ; all 
the weapons had to be forged. 

The Bible had to be translated into almost every 
language of the heathen world. Carey alone trans- 
lated the whole, or portions of it, into thirty of the 


318 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


dialects of India. For this purpose the armory 
of the Bible Society was gradually extended. 

In many cases the written language had to be 
created. Between the translation of the Bible into 
Gothic by Ulphilas in the fourth century, and the 
work of the Bible Society in the nineteenth, not a 
translation of the Scriptures had been made for the 
instruction and conversion of races outside Chris- 
tendom. 

It is true that only three centuries since the 
third — namely the tenth, eleventh, and fifteenth — 
are unmarked by fresh translations ; but these were 
made for people already within the pale of Chris- 
tendom. 

Nearly three hundred years ago Luther’s 
“ German Bible for the German Folk ” had begun 
to create a German people and a German language ; 
but now first the Christian Church arose to place 
the Testament of her Lord in the hands of the 
whole race He came to redeem and to rule. 

In India the missionaries found the Sacred 
Books of the Buddhist and of Mahomet, but not 
that of Christ. In Africa and the islands of the 
Pacific they found not only no Bible, but no gram- 
mar, no alphabet, no written language. In other 
regions of the East they found indeed translations 
of the Christian Scriptures, but in ancient forms 
of speech which had died out of the comprehen- 
sion of the people for more than a thousand years. 

Every missionary in those days went on a voy- 
age of discovery. What missionary meetings and 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


319 


reports were in those days it is difficult almost to 
recall in these. The centuries of slumber were 
over — 

“ And all the long pent stream of life 
Dashed downward in a cataract. ” 

All this was embodied to me, and to hundreds be- 
sides me, in that unpicturesque assembly in Free- 
masons’ hall. 

Do we not, indeed, often aim too low, in our 
aesthetics and symbolisms ? 

Is not sculpture higher than architecture ? Is 
not a statue of Phidias, a Yenus of Milo, more than 
the temple which may enshrine it? 

What do we mean by a shrine, but the sacred 
casket which the temple, as an outer case, enshrines ? 
What do we mean by a shrine, unless the jewel 
is more precious than the casket ? 

And through the religion which centres in the 
Incarnation, the truth that “ the true Shechinah is 
man,” receives a new force which is simply infinite. 
More precious, capable of a diviner beauty than 
the most glorious cathedral, is the simplest, the 
lowest, the most lost, of the crowd of human beings 
gathered in it. 

To the eyes which see things as they are, as the 
serene souls illumined with the “ angelical smile ” 
in Dante’s “ Paradiso,” a multitude of men and 
women gathered from solitary patient labors in ob- 
scure corners to rejoice together and help towards 
the growth of the Kingdom through the manifest- 
ations of the King, must surely require no acces- 


320 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


sories of place or ceremonial to make as fair a 
picture as earth can show. The time may come 
when the highest art will he seen to be with those 
for whom goodness and truth are indissoluble from 
beauty, because they are the eternal beauty. 

To me, in those youthful days, when the hymn 
of glory to Christ was sung in unison, it seemed 
like nothing so much as that “ voice of a great mul- 
titude, and of many waters, and of mighty thunder- 
ings,” heard of old in heaven. 

I knew some of the quiet fountains from which 
those many waters flowed, the little clouds, “ no 
bigger than a man’s hand,” in which the electric 
force was gathered, which burst forth in that thun- 
der of thanksgiving. I knew not only the Claphams, 
but the Abbot’s Weirs. 

This crowd had not been formed, did not live 
as a crowd. It was gathered, the best part of it, 
one by one, from quiet hidden places scattered 
through the land, where the little band, and the sol- 
itary worker, were pulling “ against the stream ” 
of their own little district. It had been gathered, 
one by one, as I believed, in quiet hidden hours, 
when each human spirit there had been brought 
into solitary communion with the Divine Spirit. 

For a moment those quiet waters had come forth 
from the unseen in this visible, audible tide of 
praise ; and soon they would pass again into the 
unseen, visible and audible only to Him who 
alone and who always sees the Church as One, 


4 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 321 

because He sees every individual which makes that 
great unity. 

Fastidious criticism may pull its rhythm and 
symbolism to pieces ; but to me the 

“ Crown Him, crown Him, crown Him Lord of all ! ” 

sung by the thousand earnest voices, was like a great 
coronation anthem. 

I seem visibly, audibly, as well as inwardly — 
“body, soul, and spirit” — translated into some glo- 
rious cathedral, into the temple which all cathedrals 
symbolize, “ the pattern showed in the Mount of 
God.” 

I thought, I felt — all Clapham, all “ evangelical ” 
England felt — that the whole Church was entering 
on a new era, a new spring-tide, a new outpouring 
from the pure well of life, a new enkindling of the 
divine fires. 

Were we altogether wrong ? Was there nothing 
of Pentecost in the fire which has cleansed the actual 
literal hell of our prisons, consumed the devilish 
iniquity of slavery out of nation after nation, enkin- 
dled the ltght of the love of Christ in countless dark 
places which knew not a ray of it, in India, China, 
Africa, and the islands of the sea, given the Bible 
in nearly eighty new tongues to those who speak 
them? 

Has there arisen before or afterwards, since apos- 
tolic days, a movement which has accomplished 
more in the divine literature written on “ the tables 


21 


322 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 




of the heart,” which as we believe, shall never be 
superseded and become obsolete ? or in that Church 
Architecture which no fires of Advent judgment 
shall dissolve ? 




CHAPTER XXI. 

T was on the last day of May ; the day 
which at Abbot’s Weir troops of children 
still celebrated by singing old songs from 
door to door, carrying garlands festooned 
with strings of eggs. Every incident of that day 
is as clear to my memory as a proof-engraving, 
bitten in by the event of its close. 

I was sitting by the open window in Cousin 
Crichton’s drawing-room, all kinds of sweet English 
fragrance wafted in from the garden, and all kinds 
of delicate aromatic exotic perfumes breathing out 
of the conservatory. 

Mr. Twistleton, the curate, had just come in, and 
was hovering about in an indefinite way. At 
length he approached the window, and looking out 
on the sunny lawn, turned to me and exclaimed, in 
a kind of mild rapture, — 

“ Ah, Miss Danescombe, ‘ all this , and heaven 
afterwards ! ’ ” 

The last words were a quotation from a tract 
about a thankful old woman. 

“ Oh, please not, Mr. Twistleton ! ” I said. “ It 



324 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


was just the old woman’s c all this ’ being her 
poor bare old solitary room, that made it so beau- 
tiful in her to say it. Please not to talk of our 
‘ all this ; ’ it makes me so afraid heaven might be 
like it. ” 

“ My dear Miss Danescombe,” he replied, sur- 
prised, apparently, at the vehemence of my tone, 
“ surely such foretastes of Paradise are given to 
prepare us for the reality.” 

“ Oh, I trust not,” I said, “ I think not, I am 
sure not. God will never let heaven be just a 
little bit of exclusive bliss, without even as much 
power of spreading it as we have here. It is so 
unlike Himself.” 

He looked perplexed at my ideas, and a little 
hurt at my fervor. I believe he thought I was 
getting into dangerous speculations, and had rather 
a dangerous temper, and in a short time, after a 
few indifferent observations, he left. My cousin 
always insisted I had unconsciously checked a dec- 
laration. But I never thought so. And if I had, 
it was very fortunate for us both, inasmuch as 
he married very wisely and well a month or two 
afterwards. 

All day my cousins and I were busy about some 
of their countless bountiful and considerate kind- 
nesses ; cutting and binding up flowers to take to 
invalids, hunting out truant Sunday-school chil- 
dren, carrying little dainties and tracts to the sick 
poor. It was one of Cousin Barbara’s plans always 
to connect body and soul in her distributions, espe- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


325 


daily because tracts, not being expensive luxuries, 
she could not bear that her pensioners should think 
she commuted costly temporal help for cheap reli- 
gious benefactions. Political economy did not 
trouble her any more than it did St. Francis. How 
to sustain without weakening is a problem at no 
time easy to solve, with which she did not perplex 
herself at all. 

My cousin Harriet and I were coming in at the 
garden-gate after our last expedition, when we met 
Piers. He was walking with a languor quite un- 
like himself. Something in his face smote through 
me like a sword. He looked stricken. 

“ Where have you been ? ” I said. 

“ Through some of the jails with John,” he 
said. 

“ They were very terrible ?” I said. 

“ Too terrible to speak of, sister,” he said. 

There was something in his voice, and in his 
going back to that old name of our childhood, 
which touched me unaccountably. 

“ You are ill, Piers,” I said, clinging to his arm. 
It felt no support. He needed support from me. 
He let me go silently up with him to his room, and 
then he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. 

And so that terrible time began ; unannounced, 
unforeseen, as the terrible things do come to us in 
life, whether they creep on us with footsteps slow 
and noiseless as those of Time, or crash on us in 
the earthquake and the whirlwind. 

The earth opening her mouth in the midst of 


326 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


the tents where the family meal is preparing and 
the little children are at play ! 

Down into the dreadful chasm we went, Piers 
and I ; the valley of the shadow of death, so close 
alw r ays to us all ; he lying on the bed of fever, I 
watching beside him hour by hour and day by day, 
watching every look and movement, yet sepa- 
rated from him all the while farther than by con- 
tinents. 

Week followed week, unnoticed, in that land 
where Time was no more. 

Delirium came ; and the secrets of that brave 
tender heart were unveiled. 

My father joined us ; and we watched together, 
yet still apart from each other as from Piers, afraid 
to murmur our fears, unwilling to enfeeble the little 
gossamer thread of hope to which we clung by 
trusting it to words. 

***** 

We watched together, yet alone, in that land 
of chaos and thick darkness, where all the billows 
and waves go over us, yet we live, if it can be 
called living to lie, breathing, but stunned and 
blinded ; that land of desolation where every one 
is alone, where prayer becomes nothing but a cry 
without words, a lifting up of the soul like the 
eyes blinded with tears, not to see but to appeal , 
or at best (if such faith is given), a helpless, speech- 
less falling on the heart of the Father, and resting 
for a sustaining moment there. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


327 


And at last we touched the ground at the bot- 
tom of that awful chasm, and found that this time 
it was not to be unfathomable ; that this time the 
earth was not to close over him visibly, and over 
us in soul. 

At last, one morning, after a quiet sleep, he 
said in a quiet, feeble, natural voice — 

“Sister, I have been very ill. I must have 
given a great deal of trouble.” 

Then I called my father, who was trying to 
sleep in the next room ; and with quiet voices, as 
if it was all a matter of course, but with hearts 
beating with a tumult of joy, we spoke to him — • 
to him — yes, to himself, once more, and he an- 
swered. The dreadful chasm cleaving us into sep- 
arate existence was gone. 

We were one once more ; we lived and our 
lives flowed together ; and oh, how much closer, 
how much deeper, how much fuller, for all we had 
gone through apart ! 

I have gone down into that gulf of terror more 
than once since then. 

I have crept up out of it alone to the poor com- 
mon earth, while the one I watched has risen out 
of it, unseen, into the higher, fuller life awaiting 
us beyond. 

I have learned slowly, slowly, and with what 
anguish, that there is “ a better deliverance ” from 
sickness than recovering to this fettered life. 

I have learned to believe, and sometimes to feel, 


32S 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


that the joy of that restoration to health — over- 
whelming, intense as it was — is but a faint picture 
of the joy of the rising to live the immortal life, 
over which death has no dominion. But to this 
day that joy of welcoming my brother back to us, 
of seeing him rise step by step to life and health, 
and rise enriched with treasures from the depths 
into which he had decended, remains to me the 
purest type of that other joy “ incorruptible and 
undefiled, and that fadeth not away/’ which now I 
embrace by faith for my beloved, and hope ere 
long with them to know. 

How tender they all were, those cousins of ours, 
the servants of the house, every one, in their sym- 
pathy in our joy ! How near they seemed, they who, 
during that time when we were thus watching in 
the darkness, had seemed as far off as creatures in 
another planet ; how ungrateful I felt I must have 
been for all their help ; how grateful I felt now ! 

Cousin Barbara had some new surprise every 
day from those countless, hospitable luxuries of 
hers which she persisted in ascetically calling “ lit- 
tle comforts ; ” flowers, dainties, cushions, easy 
chairs, the easiest of carriages. 

I could not help feeling that the rather oppres- 
sive necessity, or rather “ duty ” of being rich, which 
had occasionally weighed on me at Clapham, had its 
very pleasant side when one had to be convalescent 
in such a Castle Bountiful as Cousin Crichton’s. 

Yet I could never forget that there were depths 
into which no Castle Bountiful could pour one drop 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


329 


of consolation. I could never forget that in all 
that terrible time the only human comfort that had 
reached me was from the one chamber of suffering 
in that beautiful, bountiful home ; that the only 
tears I had been able to shed were one night when, 
at the very darkest of all, I had crept into little 
Martha’s room, and she had clasped her poor thin 
arms round me and sobbed — 

u Cousin Bride, I do love him so dearly ! But 
oh, indeed, God loves him better ! ‘ Lord , he whom 
Thou lovest is sick Poor dear cousin Bride ! ” 




CHAPTER XXII. 

NE day we were driving together, Piers 
and I, in Cousin Crichton’s carriage alone 
through the green lanes and over the 
commons which then stretched beyond 
Clapham, alone in that delightful uninterrupted 
solitude one feels in a carriage, where no one can 
get at one, and when one has no duties to any one 
to summon one awa} r . 

It was one of our first drives. 

“ Bride,” Piers said to me suddenly, “ I was 
delirious, was I not ? ” 

I had to admit it. 

“ Did I say anything ? ” 

“ You thought you were a doctor, sometimes,” 
I said, “ and seemed very pleased.” 

“ I hope father was not there,” he said. 

“ Oh, you dear blind boy ! ” I said, “ hiding 
your wise ostrich head in the sands. Do you think 
we do not know what you gave up to help us all ? 
And do you think we do not love to know it ? Or 
that yon will make us forget ? ” 

“Was that all?” he said. 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


331 


There were two other seals broken. 

u Must he know ? ” 

“ He must know.” 

How, which seal should I break first ? I turned 
away my head. 

“ You spoke a little — a great deal — of Claire,” 
I said. 

“ Was any one there ! ” he asked, very earnestly. 

“ Ho one but me, ” I said ; “ and I always knew.” 

“ That will do,” he said. 

And then there was rather a long pause. 

“ Hothing else ? ” he said at last, with some relief. 

“ Yes, something else, brother, ” I said — 
“ scarcely anything continually, but that one thing.” 

He looked inquiring. 

I could scarcely speak of it yet. I scarcely 
knew if he was strong enough to bear it. Such 
anguish had been in his bewildered eyes, and in 
his clear, strong, unnatural tones when he spoke 
of this. At last I resolved to say — 

“ It was sin , brother. You kept saying your 
life had been lost, lost. You kept asking if there 
was forgiveness for you ; for you / You kept on 
telling me to be ready ; ready — as you were not. 
Oh, do not ask me to speak of it ! while all our 
agony was that you were ready, ready to leave us 
and go away among the redeemed and holy, and 
be blessed forever, and see God, and we see you 
no more on earth forever ! Do not ask me. I can- 
not speak of that.” 

“ I was not ready, Bride,” he said quietly. 


332 AGAINST TEE STREAM. 

“ Do not say so, Piers,” I replied, “ you who 
had always lived for us all ! ” 

“ Bride,” he said, “ I had not lived for God.” 

u Surely,” I said, “ to live for those He has 
given us is to live for God.” 

“ I used to think so,” he said ; “ and certainly 
loving our neighbors as ourselves is not always so 
easy, Bride, especially when our neighbors are 
very near, and we cannot quite like them. But 
there is something more. There is the first great 
commandment, you know, as well as the second ; 
before the second, the foundation of the second. 
I do not think I had ever even tried to keep that. 
To love God with all our heart and soul and mind 
and strength must mean something else than loving 
our neighbor as ourselves. Our Lord did not use 
vain repetitions. To love God himself for His 
love to us, for himself ! Sister, I had been learning 
for weeks that I have never done it. I felt it by 
the lives around me, which had something I had 
not. I saw it in Mr. Wilberforce’s book on Prac- 
tical Christianity. And if to break the greatest 
commandment is sin, I have sinned ; not once or 
twice, or seventy times seven, but always.” 

“ But,” I said, “ to obey is to love, to submit is 
to love. And you had obeyed, and had submitted, 
God knows.” 

“ To love is to obey,” he said ; “ to love is to 
submit ; but to love is more. You know that, 
Bride, well. ” 

I did. It was useless to attempt to argue or to 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


333 


justify him to himself. There is no tilling up 
chasms God has rent, with dust, or with rose-water. 

There was a long pause. 

At length I said — 

“ But you are not so sad about yourself now. 
What did you do ? ” 

“ I went in heart to God,” he said, “ and con- 
fessed to him that He was my Father, and I had 
not honored him ; that He was my Redeemer, and 
I had not been grateful to him. And I pleaded 
with him, because He is my Father, to forgive 
me ; and because He is my Saviour, to save me ; 
to give me to know and to love him, to reveal 
himself by the Holy Spirit to me. For I was 
sure that if I knew him as He is, I must love him. 
It must be only some crust, or veil, or cataract, in 
my eyes that hindered my seeing; and it could be 
only not seeing that hindered my loving. There 
was nothing to be created for me to see, only some- 
thing in me to be removed that I might see. He, 
with His infinite love, was there. I asked him to 
open my heart that I might see and love.” 

I could scarcely speak. 

“ He was sure to hear,” I said. 

“ Quite sure,” he replied. “ There was but one 
answer — Christ , He gave me to see Christ.” 

“ You had no dream, no vision ? ” I said. 

“ What do we want of dreams and visions ? ” 
he replied. “ Of old it was in divers manners. 
In these last days He has sent his Son. It is day, 
Bride, now — not night. It is revelation, not 


334 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


clouds and darkness. The brightness of his glory 
has been unveiled, the express image of his person 
has come, full of grace and truth; has been a 
little child ; has taken the little children in his 
arms ; has touched the leper and healed him ; has 
let the sinners touch him, and has forgiven them ; 
has let them nail him to the Cross, and has prayed 
for their forgiveness ; has loved us, and given him- 
self for us ; has borne our sins in his own body on 
the Cross, and has redeemed us ; has done all the 
holy will we have failed to do, to enable us to do 
it ; has suffered what we could never have borne, 
to enable us to suffer ; being forever one God, has 
made himself forever one with us, and is touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities ; not pitiful only 
or beneficent, but touched; has loved me and given 
himself for me ; for with him “ us means not a 
mass of humanity, but a multitude of men and 
women. And I Jcnow it , sister. Thank God, I 
know it, now, for myself. And now that first com- 
mandment sometimes seems as unnecessary as a 
command to love my father or you ; as much an 
instinct as breathing, as the love the heart has 
never lived without.” 

We were silent a long time. Then the carriage 
swept up to the porch. And Piers went to his 
room to rest, and I to mine. 

There is no filling up chasms sin has made or 
God has made in humanity, or in the heart or con- 
science of any one of us, with anything but him- 
self. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

E returned to Abbot’s Weir through a 
very different land from that we had 
traversed on our way to Clapham at the' 
beginning of the year. It was late in 
October. Once more there had been a good har- 
vest. Everywhere arose the golden wheat-stacks 
of the plentiful crop just harvested. There seemed 
a new elasticity in the very air as we went back 
through the land relieved from the pressure of fam- 
ine, with Piers restored to us — restored, as he felt, 
to more than a few added years ; to life essential, 
spiritual, immortal. 

The voices of the ploughboys, as they followed 
their teams through the brown fields which had just 
yielded their abundant stores, rang clear and joyous 
through the crisp autumn air. The men seemed to 
step with a firmer tread ; the women sang to their 
children at work by the cottage doors as we passed 
through the villages ; the children ran after the 
coach with vigorous limbs and lungs. The hol- 
low-cheeked groups that had hung about the inn- 
doors had vanished. The land was full of stir, 



336 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


and work, and hope. Eager groups there were, 
indeed, everywhere, watching what further con- 
firmation of the new glad tidings we might 
bring. For all England was in an intoxication of joy 
at the new peace with France ; the peace of Amiens. 
A week or two before, crowds had met in London to 
welcome the French Ambassador, had taken the 
horses out of his coach, and dragged it by White- 
hall, through St. James’s Park, to the park-entrance 
of the Admiralty, where the gallant Lord St. Vin- 
cent, still exceptionally in possession of his senses, 
had soberty recommended them, “ if they were bent 
on doing the gentlemen this honor, at all events, to 
control their enthusiasm so far as not to upset the 
coach.” 

The French Ambassador must have received a 
shock to the national theory of the phlegmatic 
character of Englishmen. 

In Bath, Mr. Wilberforce found the people 
“ mad with joy.” In many of the towns through 
which we passed, bells were ringing, crowds were 
hurrahing; in some, the streets had glorified them- 
selves with arches of greenery, and such spasmodic 
displays of flags and boughs as England, puritan-' 
ized out of her mediaeval picturesqueness, and yet 
unenlightened by imitative modern aesthetics, could 
conjure out of her own unassisted brain. 

“ Peace, peace ! ” The glad tidings rang through 
the land, and the nation burst into one of those 
outbursts of great joy which are so pathetic when 
we think either to how little fruition they led, how 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


337 


much aspiration they expressed, or how much they 
symbolize. 

Yes, we hoped, some of us, it was “ on earth,” 
not only in one little corner of it ; peace through- 
out Christendom ; England being the last of the 
nations to hold out the right hand of fellowship to 
this new mysterious power born amid so much 
“ blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke ” in France. 

All Europe, for the moment, was at peace. 
What murmurs there might be from the ashes of 
burnt villages in Switzerland, from cities in Italy 
or in Belgium plundered by armies or by tax-gath- 
erers ; what apprehension in the hearts of empe- 
rors at St. Petersburg or Yienna, and among the 
people everywhere, at a propaganda of liberty and 
fraternity, carried on like Mahomet’s — by fire and 
sword — did not at that sanguine moment affect us. 

The forms of the republic, in France, were as 
yet preserved intact ; indeed, they had become 
more classical than ever. The edifice was crowned 
with a First Consul. What dangers to freedom 
or peace could lurk under a title so modest and so 
democratic ? 

There were, it is true, a few anxious and fore- 
casting spirits who did not hope. The king, it was 
said, did not hope. He thought the peace only ex- 
perimental. But then the king had been wont to 
hope at wrong times. He had hoped obstinately to 
crush the opposition of the American colonies ; 
and the American colonies had detached themselves 
into a nation. 

22 


338 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


Mr. Pitt did not hope. But Mr. Pitt was out 
of office. 

Many military and naval men did not hope. 
But then military and naval men naturally liked 
war. 

And so we gave France everything she asked, 
except Naples and the Papal States (whether it 
was ours or not to give,) settlements in India, and 
at the Cape of Good Hope, West India Islands, 
Italian protectorates, Rhine frontiers; and then, 
like a fond and indulgent parent, fell into a rap 
ture over her at consenting to be reconciled. 
Having everything she could possibly want, what 
could the result be but that she would be satisfied 
and keep quiet, and never disturb the family peace 
again ? 

Meantime there was bread enough and to spare, 
and work for every one who would work ; and our 
England was a very merry and contented land to 
travel through in that genial October sunshine 
which had done such good work for her harvests, 
and was now touching her woods and ferny downs 
with every choicest and richest tint of bronze and 
gold. 

How beautiful the dear old grey town looked 
in the depths of its green chalice, embossed with 
its crimson and golden woods, and rimmed with 
the warm tints of its fern-covered moors, and the 
soft blues and purples of its rocky “ tors ! ” It must 
be confessed that its solid old monastic bridge 
looked a little diminutive after Westminster, and 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


339 


the streets a little narrow, and the houses, which 
had once seemed so tall, rather low, and the whole 
town dwarfed and unimposing to an extent that 
it seemed a disloyalty to admit even to oneself. 
But then the land around it was so large and free ; 
the long sweep of the valley ; the wide world of 
those well-known woods free to every one to gather 
endless primroses and bluebells in ; the range be- 
yond range of its wild moorland hills. 

A sense of freedom came over me in more 
senses than one ; for in more senses than one I felt 
as if our little human world of Abbot’s Weir, like 
the place itself, though small in itself, opened out 
into a wider world than that of Clapham. 

I felt it first when Amice, in herself so wide a 
world, stopped the postchaise we were in for a 
moment of welcome at the great park-gate of 
Court ; again, when Madame des Ormes, leaning on 
the arm of our Claire, greeted us in her sweet 
French at our own old arched doorway ; when 
Beuben Pengelly blessed God that we were safe 
back again ; and most of all when I sat alone for 
half an hour that evening with Loveday Benbow, 
and looked out once more with her eyes into that 
wide world of which not Abbot’s Weir or Clapham 
only, or only England, or even Christendom, were 
mere fragments, but this whole visible world of 
space, and all this transitory age of time. 

Beautiful and sheltering as the woods and for- 
ests are, the finest and freest tree cannot be the 
product of the forest ; it must stand apart, where it 


340 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


has need of a more robust strength to maintain its 
own unaided battles, and space to develop into a 
freer individuality and a larger symmetry. 

At Clapham, the current against the stream 
was in itself so broad and strong, that there was 
little demand on spiritual nerve and muscle in 
gliding along it. If, as Goethe says, character un- 
folds itself in the storms of the world, it must be 
in storms encountered by the solitary bark, not in a 
fleet of vessels cheering each other on. 

Yery delightful it was to come back to Loveday, 
and find her all I had left her and imagined her 
and more than all I had found since. The deepest 
and highest life is by necessity also really the 
broadest ; broader by all the space in heaven and 
the infinity of God. If we deepen the channel 
enough, and connect it with the Fountain of Life, 
as with the ocean, we need not fear that it will be 
narrow ; the very force and volume of the waters 
will make it broad. 

With every one else one seemed to take up the 
old relationship just on a slightly different level, 
at least at first, with just a touch of strangeness, a 
kind of soupgon of a new and foreign accent enter- 
ing into our intercourse, a sense of new experiences 
gone through apart. With Loveday one seemed 
to have been present all the time, simply to go on, 
and not begin again at all. She always seemed a 
creature over whom time had no power. There 
she sat, as of old, dove-colored and white, with her 
dove-like voice and spiritual dove’s wings ; and 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


34:1 


her youth, renewed like the eagle’s, as of old, to 
defend that great multitude of the heavy-laden 
which were her brood. 

No ; Loveday was no dream. She was quite 
unchanged. 

Mrs. Danescombe also was unchanged. And 
I felt she felt I was unchanged, and felt it with a 
shade of reproach and disappointment. 

To have spent nine months at Clapham, in the 
society of my “ influential cousins,” and with all the 
superior clothing and manners of London at hand, 
by which to remodel my own, and to have come 
back just the same Bride Danescombe, unmodified, 
unengaged, it was difficult to understand, .and not 
a little difficult for her to sustain ; especially as 
every one else seemed rather to like it. 

Reuben was not at all surprised. 

“ Didn’t I tell thee, old woman,” he said to 
Priscy, a she would bring back no London airs ? 
iWhat is London to such as she, beside old times ? ” 

Priscy was surprised. She met me with a very 
elaborate courtesy, and was delightfully ruffled and 
taken aback when I returned it as for twenty years 
by a kiss. 

And Madam Glanvil decreed with a nod that I 
was as well as could be expected, and would do, 
provided there were no hidden gems of Claphamic 
philanthropy lurking undeveloped. 

“ Infection does not come out at once, in some 
diseases,” said she. “ It was a dangerous experi- 
ment. But in a little while we shall see.” 


342 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


My dear cousin, Dick Fyford, was not a little 
changed ; changed for one thing into a lieutenant, 
having been with Nelson at Copenhagen, and Nel- 
son being a leader of the kind that leads in more 
ways than one to promotion ; showing the way by 
being foremost, inspiring men to be their best, and 
also clearing the way by his terrible alternatives of 
victory or death. He had compacted into a man, 
having found a calling in which no amount of en- 
ergy was superfluous, and no amount of daring out 
of place. 

Moreover, much of the hardness, as well as the 
aimless restlessness of the boy had passed from him, 
or fitted into the right place in him. 

He privately confessed to me that the wrongs 
of the common seamen were all but intolerable to 
see ; say nothing of suffering. 

“You were not so far wrong about impress 
ment, Cousin Bride,” said he, “ as I thought you 
were, long ago, when I wished you were a boy, at 
Miss Felicity’s ; and would have fought you had 
you been one. There is work for your anti-slavery 
people nearer home than in the West Indies. Kid- 
napping, bad and little food, flogging, turning out 
to die like dogs when wounded and sick ; terribly 
like negro slavery. Enough to make a man a 
Whig, or a Jacobin, or any thing to set it right.” 
(Dick’s politics were never abstract.) “ The mu- 
tinies at the Nore and at Spithead were put down 
three years ago. And while Bonaparte keeps the 
old country awake, and Nelson keeps him down, all 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


343 


may go right. But to be fed and flogged as those 
poor fellows are, and to fight as they do, is more 
like patriotism and the old Greeks and Bomans 
and all that,” (Dick’s history was never very defi- 
nite,) “ than a good deal of the work people get 
stars and peerages for.” 

Dick was not indeed changed in his “ constancy 
in loving,” nor as yet in the object of that constant 
love. He had fallen deeper than ever into what 
he believed his unconquerable passion for Amice 
Glanvil. 

This time it was “ no child’s play, no changing 
dream, but only too serious ; presumptuous, he felt ; 
desperate, he feared ; but, hopeless or not, only to 
be torn from his heart with life.” 

“ You are her friend, Cousin Bride,” he said 
tragicalty ; “ you will understand.” 

I wished to be sympathetic, but I could not be 
encouraging. They seemed to me too far apart : 
she with her early depth of womanhood, under all 
her girlish impulsiveness, he with so much of the 
boyish yet about him, man as he was in courage 
and in command, where command was called for ; 
to be at all likely to fit each other. But the differ- 
ence between them seemed to Dick exactly the 
hopeful symptom in the case. 

“ Similars in friendship, Cousin Bride, oppo- 
sites in love ! ” he said, with the sententiousness of 
long experience. “ You and T, you know, have 
always understood each other better than any one ; 
and you are the best friend I have, and always 


344 : 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


were. Amice Glanvil and I do not understand 
each other, and never did. And there is the hope ; 
feeble I confess ; but one could live on a crumb 
from that table.” 

“We needs must love the highest when we see it.” 

Those early “ little loves ” of my cousin’s often 
reminded me of Amice’s portrait, the crocus-bulb, 
sending out its long feeler into the soil to find 
something to root itself to. They were no dilet 
tante fancies ; they had all the humility of a genu- 
ine passion, and so, in their measure, did not sink 
but raise him. He never fancied any one was in 
love with him. 

I said, he knew I always liked to do what 1 
could for him. 

“ He did know. I had always been as good as 
a mother to him.” 

“ Hot quite that ! ” I remonstrated. “ I thought 
that was too much even to try to be to any one.” 

“ Well, as good as a grandmother, at all events, 
Cousin Bride,” he said, “as good and indulgent 
and ready to help as the best grandmother that 
ever was ! ” 

He meant it as a compliment ; just as the old 
gentleman at Clapham, old enough to be my 
grandfather, had meant it as a compliment to ask 
me to be his wife. 

It was plain I must accept the dignities of ad- 
vanced age. Perhaps I should grow younger as 
my years increased. Meantime I would be as 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


345 


grandmotherly as the duties of such a generally- 
recognized protectorate demanded. 

Miss Felicity was rigidly changeless. As the 
tutelary Athena of Abbot’s Weir, she seemed to 
grasp the HCgis with her firmest resolve, ready to 
turn it on any dragon’s brood which might have 
sprung up in Piers or me, of presumption, or con- 
ceit, or London pride ; and to appal them instanta- 
neously into stone. However, she was soon reas- 
sured, and the JEgis vanished, and all the militant 
bearing disappeared, when I ventured to give her a 
snuff-box full of what Cousin Crichton had called 
“ the finest Rappee ” which I had brought for the 
Lieutenant. 

It moved her much that any one should lay the 
smallest offering on the shrine, on which it seemed 
to her nothing that she should lay her life. 

“ You are a kind child, Bride Danescombe, she 
said, going back to the beginning of our friendship, 
to the foolscap and the stool of penance. “ You 
are a dear, generous child. If any one wants you 
to be good to them for life, they have only to begin 
by doing you an injustice.’’ 

And Claire, was she changed ? 

She was nearly a year older. Yes, quite a year, 
and that is a great deal at sixteen. 

She was a year older, for one thing, because her 
mother was a year older, too obviously. 

A little more of a stoop in the dignified figure, 
of slowness in the step ; the fire with which she. 
spoke of the past no longer only subdued, but 


346 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


fading ; the light in which she saw the present a 
little dimmed ; the fears with which she saw the 
future a little darker, — the future which was to her 
all embodied in her Claire, on whose face her eyes 
would rest so long with such a wistful solicitude. 

An era of tender concealments had begun be- 
tween the mother and child. When that long 
gaze at last would meet the quick, anxious glance 
of Claire — Claire, who had been feeling it so long, 
and had not dared to look, — the solicitude would 
melt instantly out of both faces ; and on one side or 
the other, some tender little pleasantry would dart 
out to veil the anxious care which lay beneath. 

And so thinking, dear souls, or trying to think, 
they had quite imposed on one another, they went 
on. And meantime their little stratagems had 
successfully imposed on Leontine. 

“Ah, Mademoiselle,” she remarked to me one 
day, soon after my return, mournfully shaking her 
head, and glancing from Claire (who was humming 
an old nursery chanson as she arranged her autumn 
leaves in the next room) to her mother, watching her 
from the couch. “That poor cherished child, she 
knows no more than the babe unborn what is be- 
fore her !” 

“ Do any of us, Leontine ?” I replied. “ If she 
did know, what better could she do % ” 

“ But the shock, Mademoiselle Bride, the wak- 
ing up, think how terrible ! 55 

“ What is to prevent what is terrible from being 
a shock, and a waking up, Leontine ?” I said, think- 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 347 

ing of Piers’s illness. “ Would fear help us? or 
foreseeing ? seeing the next step ? ” 

“ But when the next step may be a precipice?” 
“ What can we do, Leontine, but look to Him 
who sees beyond the next step ? What can we wish 
for them more ? Besides,” I added, trying to com- 
bat my own fears, “ Madame is not old. She may 
revive. She has such a power of life.” 

“ Alas, Madame is old,” Leontine replied. 
“ What does Revolution mean but that the whole 
machinery of the State has gone wrong, and the 
wheels spin madly round like a whirlwind instead 
of stealing round imperceptibly like the hands of 
a clock ? Madame lived a thousand revolutions of 
the years in one day ; one day, Mademoiselle, 
which she never speaks of to any unless to Miss 
Loveday ; one day when the best blood of France 
was shed between L’Abbaye and La Force. There 
is no turning the sun-dial backwards, Mademoiselle, 
over such degrees ! But to you and that angelic 
child there is yet sunshine ; and in the sunshine the 
birds must sing. Let them, poor innocents, while 
they can ; while they can ! ” 

But if Claire had grown a year during those 
months of separation, Piers had grown and gained 
more. To him, in that sickness, 

“ The sudden frost was sudden gain, 

And gave all ripeness to the grain 
It might have drawn from after heat.” 

•No life, worth calling life, is to be measured by 
years ; and he at eighteen was a being one could 


348 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


rest on, and did rest on, who cared for ns all, 
instead of needing to be cared for ; and if that 
does not mean the best part of manhood, what 
does ? 

Claire met him, when we returned, frankly, 
joyously, just as of old, with that combination of 
French and English manners which was in her so 
charming, with a gracious little courtesy, and a 
frank shake of the hand, and a little pleasantry 
about his steam-engine. But when she looked up 
with her happy eyes and met his, something 
silenced the little pleasantry, and flushed for a mo- 
ment the bright face, and troubled the smiling eyes. 

Was it a look in his, or only that his face was 
still pale and thin ? 

However it was, so it happened that they 
changed towards each other. A distance came, 
and a reverence, and a doubting of one another, 
and a comprehension of one another, — and a death 
of old things, and a creation of new, which made 
them further from each other and nearer each other 
than all the world besides ; yes, all the world, Piers 
and I, and Claire and I, included. 

On one ground they still met free from self- 
consciousness, or that double self-consciousness of 
love. One sacred care united them, old and yet 
mournfully new, the tender, thoughtful care for 
Claire’s mother. 

I could not but see how her eyes followed them 
both, and seemed to embrace them in one deep, 
motherly gaze. Sometimes I used to wonder 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


349 


whether, just in this one case, her old French cus- 
toms would not have been better than ours. 

Madame and my father could have negotiated 
it all so amicably, and watched as a double provi- 
dence over their two children, and betrothed them 
quite simply, and given them sanction to love each 
other as much as they could, that is, as much as 
they did. The sweet sacredness and mystery and 
reverence would have remained, and the anxious 
questionings, the unreasonable fears, the distracting 
doubts would have vanished. Yet, would the one 
have remained ? or would the other have vanished ? 
Could any arrangement have helped them to 
find each other? Could any arrangement, they 
having found each other, have saved them the self- 
doubtings, and questionings of one another, the 
fears and solicitudes which were but the shadows 
of the great love ? 

And, indeed, could Madame or my father have 
dared to initiate any such treaty? To accept it was 
another thing. 

To attend mass and be a little jphilosophe was 
one thing ; not to attend mass, to be definitely 
Protestant, and religious to the heart’s core, was 
another. Infinitely better, I believe, Madame felt, 
for Piers himself. But for Claire ? That Protes- 
tant world, with its endless divisions, and its thin 
rigid partitions, seemed to Madame such an inextri- 
cable labyrinth, such a seething chaos. It was true 
that France was a chaos, but then France had for 
the moment abandoned religion. When religion 


350 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


itself, the Church itself became a chaos, what hope 
for the world — what hope for little Claire drifting 
to and fro on that deep ? Death might, indeed, break 
down those partitions, might reconcile all faithful 
souls in Him who came to atone ; for her these per- 
plexities already grew thin and faint ; but Claire 
had to live, and who would guide her through ? 

All this and a thousand things more were in 
Madame’s softened eyes as she watched those two 
together. 

Perhaps it was well for her and for them that 
the guiding thread could not he in her trembling 
hands. 

Our brother Francis was not changed. W e had 
talked very often of him, Piers and I, during his 
convalescence — in our drives, and in quiet moments 
on the journey home. I knew well it was of Francis 
Piers had thought when he had said in that first 
long conversation in Cousin Crichton’s chariot, 
that it was “ not always easy to love our neighbors 
as ourselves, especially when they were very near 
neighbors and we couldn’t like them.” 

We had confessed to each other that the feeling 
which had grown up in our hearts to Francis was 
very little like love, was terribly like the opposite 
of love. 

When people whose natures grate on ours at 
every point are brought into contact with us at 
every point, something stronger than a negative dis- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


351 


approval, or even a judicial dislike, is near at hand, 
and very apt to possess us ere we are aware. 

“ Hating our brother whom we have seen” is 
not altogether such an impossible sin, when we see 
in our brother exactly the things we hate, and feel 
we ought to hate. Hatred is, after all, in its begin- 
nings, only dislike enkindled by friction. 

And Francis had so many ways and qualities 
that we could not even try to like. Little selfish- 
nesses with a disguise, little untruthfulnesses with 
a purpose, little unfairnesses which it seemed mean 
to notice, little pretensions which it seemed petty 
to resist, which nevertheless fretted one more than 
a great injustice ; a general shallowness all through, 
which, like any shallow waters, had a fussing, fret- 
ting way of making little things seem great, and lit- 
tle actions important, and keeping one’s mind fixed 
on the surface. 

“If one might believe in transmigration,” I 
once said, “ it would be a comfort as regards Francis. 
Then one might take him for a larva — all outside — 
and one might hope that inside was developing 
some imperceptible creature, if it was only a but- 
terfly, — which was the real Francis ; to appear in 
some future state of existence. As it is there is 
only the shell of the larva.” 

“ There cannot be only that shell, Bride,” Piers 
replied. “That is the point. We have to find 
out the creature inside. It must be there, and we 
must get to it. When we get home we must try.” 

In that distance, in chat sunshiny atmosphere 


352 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of Cousin Crichton’s, in the joy of renewed 
strength, and of that new life of faith, every victory 
seemed so easy, every victory so sure to inaugurate 
a conquest ! 

So we came home ; and we did try. It seemed 
as if Francis must have changed, too, and must 
recognize our new purpose and meet us in it. 

But there he was, as smooth and impenetrable 
as ever, with no more idea there was anything 
which required change in him than the Apollo 
Belvidere ; there they were again, the old difficul- 
ties, as real, as impossible not to dislike, as difficult 
not to have struck into active fire as ever. 

One misfortune was that he combined my 
father’s genial manner with my stepmother’s cold 
and superficial character. It seemed to me some- 
times as if their natures were so unlike, that the 
nature which sprang from them had a kind of ne- 
cessity of falseness in it, from the impossibility of 
any true blending of the elements. 

He had taken to one habit which was new, at 
least new in form. In childhood he always, as I 
have said, continued to glide into possession of our 
rights, our toys, coveted place in games, in short 
of whatever coin was the currency of our childish 
treasures, while we had been referred to the Sermon 
on the Mount to satisfy our claims. 

How that he was sixteen, and money, — the 
coin of the large world — became his currency, he 
began to borrow money. In the easiest way. 
His week’s allowance was not due until to-morrow T , 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


353 


or he was just out of cash, and a marvellous bargain 
had offered which would be lost to-morrow ; or some 
one had lent him a trifle, and he knew neither our 
father nor Piers would like the family to be in 
debt for such a bagatelle. And of course the mor- 
row of payment never came. 

And all such paltry sums, it seemed ungenerous 
to think of them, and a cruelty to dream of telling 
our father ! And yet our little pocket allowance 
dwindled very perceptibly before those repeated 
trifles. And Francis was gliding further and fur- 
ther into the fatal habit of doing what he liked, 
and having what he liked, without counting the 
cost. 

“ But what was to arouse him ? ” 

To all our remonstrances he opposed his cool 
impenetrability and his genial manner. 

Once indeed he was so far roused by a very 
earnest warning, as to say that if Piers made it so 
unpleasant to borrow, he would take care not to 
trouble him again. 

But he found it more unpleasant to do without 
things he wished for, forgave Piers his “ rather 
unbrotherly ” conduct, and consented to mulct our 
treasury again. 

What ought we to do ? Each successive griev- 
ance was so small, it seemed impossible to trouble 
our father with it, deep as his hatred of debt, and 
his love of us all was. And moreover, not only 
our tenderness for our father, but our very fear of 
being hard on Francis, kept us back. 

23 


354 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


It would have been to the ‘‘natural man,” in 
both of us, such a righteous satisfaction to have 
those ancient interpretations of the Sermon on the 
Mount disproved, and to see that disguise, to us so 
thin, to others apparently so impenetrable, shaken 
off, that we dared not lift a finger to hasten the 
revelation. 

“ What will be the end of it, Piers ? ” I said. 

“ Debt, hopeless debt,” he said gravely. “Dis- 
grace for us all, perhaps. Because, happily for 
Francis, this is not a world constructed so as to 
make debt in the long-run either pleasant or possi- 
ble.” 

It was on a wintry Sunday afternoon. We 
were walking on the hillside behind the garden, 
over the field-path, iron-bound with frost, cakes of 
ice in the little creeks of the Leat where we used 
to harbor our fleets, blades of grass stiff and white 
with frozen dew. 

From the grey Tors, sharply defined against the 
frosty wintry-blue of the sky, came a keen air, 
bracing every nerve and muscle. 

From the great philanthropic combats of Clap- 
ham we had come back to such little pricking diffi- 
culties ! And yet nevertheless the whole atmos- 
phere — moral, mental, and physical — felt to me 
more invigorating, more such as one’s full strength 
might develop, and do its finest work in. 

I, in my way, had brought with me countless 
schemes for the transplanting of Clapham philan- 
thropic works into the virgin Soil of Abbot’s Weir. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


355 


Piers, in his way, had set his heart on one small 
good work, which he intended forthwith to begin. 

This was neither more nor less than a Sunday- 
school. 

We were on our way that afternoon to Reuben 
Pengelly, in the Foundry-yard, to consult him as 
to the best way of carrying out what we believed 
to be altogether a new idea in Abbot’s Weir. 

Long icicles were hanging from the stationary 
water-wheel. The most beautiful fairy-like fret- 
works were circling and fringing the cascade. The 
old yard was absolutely still ; Reuben’s porch 
empty. 

We knocked at the door, full of our project, and 
then lifted the latch. 

Around the old man’s knees were gathered 
three little children, to whom he was telling Bible 
stories, as he used to Piers and me. 

“ Here have we been making our grand schemes, 
Piers,” I whispered, “ and meanwhile Reuben has 
begun! How many things the Methodists have 
begun ! ” 

“ Yes,” said Piers, “the Thames at Westmin- 
ster is something. But the little springs that run 
among the hills come first.” 

“ And they are more ! ” I rejoined. 

“ At all events,” he replied, “ there would have 
been no river without them.” 



CHAPTER XXIY. 

JT most of all I found the change in 
Amice. She had changed outwardly, as 
no one else had. Her face was thinner, 
her great dark eyes seemed larger, and 
looked further into one, than ever. 

I saw it even in that minute when the post- 
chaise stopped at the gate for her welcome to us. 

And the first day I spent at Court I felt it 
more. 

She said she had missed me and my “ good in 
everything,” and had fallen deeper than ever into 
her “ dualism.’’ “ Except,” she said, “ that the du- 
alism is only on the surface now, far enough down 
indeed, Eride ; yet underneath is something else. 
Underneath is the Atonement, Bride, the Father 
and the Son, the Manger and the Cross, and man 
reconciled. At the very root of all is not dualism, 
but the incarnate crucified Christ. At the very 
heart of all is the light. That I never lose. But 
oh ! the conflict between the light and darkness 
goes down terribly far, and goes in terribly far, 
and goes on terribly long I ” 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


357 


She looked to me like some of the old pictures 
I had seen in London of Homan Catholic saints ; 
not ecstatic, though she was capable of ecstasy, but 
full of high resolve, as if she were clasping to her 
inmost heart some invisible torture. 

Certainly, also, there was deeper dualism in the 
household. 

Madam Glanvil’s steel-grey eyes seemed ab- 
solutely to cut with their sharp suspicious glances. 
And she missed no effectual opportunity of using 
that two-edged sword which, by prerogative of age 
and deafness she wielded. 

Formerly, if the conflict between Amice and 
Madam Glanvil had perplexed me, it had amused 
me far more. The combat seemed all tournament 
work, mere tilting ; Amice often had the best of it, 
and the militant old lady was more than half 
pleased that she had. 

But now something was there which showed 
the conflict to be in earnest. 

The air was charged with thunder. The 
Jupiter-nod liad given place to the bolts of Jove; 
no mere theatrical thunder-rolls, but real light- 
nings ready to fall, no one could tell where or 
when. 

FTot half so many cutting things were said by 
Madam Glanvil, but when they came the thrusts 
were from no tilting- sword. They were meant to 
tell ; and the pain to me was that they did tell. 
Amice did not ward them off, or even seem to 
evade them. Something seemed to have taken pos- 


358 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


session of her inmost heart which compelled her to 
receive those stabs, and let the iron enter into her 
soul. 

A severer legislation also prevailed with regard 
to Chloe and those “ lazy brutes,” Cato and Caesar. 
“ They should be made to understand their place, 
if other people did not understand it for them, 
Madam Glanvil was determined.” 

Poor Chloe and Cato and Caesar were entirely 
prohibited from attending the Methodist meetings. 

Happy enough for them if they were allowed 
to enter the church, like their betters. In their 
owri. country they would probably have been 
knocked on the head long before this, as sacrifices 
to some idol or devil. In the plantation they 
would have been driven to the cane-work, and 
might have been glad, idle creatures that they 
were, if they escaped Sunday without a flogging, 
say nothing of psalm-singing.” 

She was cruel in words, Amice thought, be- 
cause deeds were impossible. The possibility of 
cruel deeds, Amice always said, would have awa- 
kened her to mercy. 

It is said words do not break bones, but they 
break worse than bones. Altogether, the three ne- 
groes had now a cowed and humble look, dreadful to 
me to see in a dog, much more in a human being. 

In general their good humor and light-hearted- 
ness won them fair treatment in the household. 
But they, especially the men, were often thought- 
less and childish, and the spirit of tyranny is too 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


359 


ready to be evoked, especially in those who are 
themselves accustomed to be on the lowest step, 
the drudges of the petty tyranny of others. 

It was not only the cowed and anxious look 
with which they followed Madam Glanvil’s eyes; 
it was the fawning and cringing on every one, that 
I could not bear to see. The one was merely the 
cowed animal, the other was the degraded and hum- 
bled man. 

And Amice could do nothing, except keep Chloe 
as much with herself as possible, that they might 
bear the blows together. 

Indeed, of all the household, Chloe seemed to 
me the only really free and happy person. 

I said so to Amice. 

“ Yes,” she replied, “Chloe went down into the 
depths long ago, and has picked up all the Beati- 
tudes there. Besides, Bride,” she added, “ Chloe 
has Only to suffer ; she has not to be the cause of 
suffering. She has not to choose. She is free be- 
cause she is a slave ; for slaves they are still, prac- 
tically, exiled and helpless, and ignorant, as they 
are. But I, on the other hand, am a slave just be- 
cause I am free.” 

We were in the library. She was leaning 
against the library ladder. 

“ You know, Bride,” she said, “ I could leave 
Granny altogether ; I am of age, and my fortune 
is my own. But just because I could, I cannot. 
If she kept me in within bolts and bars, or in chains, 
I feel sure I should break them and escape. But 


360 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


the terrible thing is, she keeps me in fetters, and 
imprisons me with love. Yes ; you may look aston- 
ished ; with love. Granny loved my father better 
than her own life ; and now she loves me better than 
my own happiness. She has nursed me like the ten- 
derest mother through dangerous infectious illness- 
es — through a fever I brought with me from the 
West Indies, and through small-pox. She took the 
small-pox. You can see the marks now in her fine 
stern old face. Only one or two ; but there they are. 
And she bore it for me. She loves me in that kind 
of way, that if, for instance, I were in love with some 
one she thought it unwise for me to marry, she would 
let me pine away and die, rather than let me marry 
as she did not like. And then she would sit alone 
until she died, and never take another creature to 
her heart, and never have a doubt that she had done 
the best thing for me that she could. Remember, 
she has never had her will crossed all her life ; and 
she clings to her own will as a martyr to his faith. 
She loves me, and hates what I care most about — 
my poor slaves, and religion. She thinks the 
negroes a set of idle savages, unfortunately neces- 
sary conditions of West Indian property, who are 
always, by their obstinacy and folly, defrauding 
me of the revenue my father’s plantations ought to 
yield. She will no more go into the question, what 
right we have to enslave them, than into the ques- 
tion, what right we have to break in horses. Of 
course, neither horses nor negroes like it : but ex 
cept for our convenience, there is no need for 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


361 


horses or negroes to live at all. They would be 
hunted dotvn like wolves. They do hunt each other 
down like wolves in Africa, she says. Then as to 
religion. She declares that the Methodists, Mora- 
vians, Baptists, all of them, set the negroes on to 
insurrection ; and of the horrors of negro insurrec- 
tions she speaks with dreadful plainness, as you 
know she can. And as you know, her beliefs 
are not in the least degree dependent on evidence. 
Of course there is no moving her. Towards the 
negroes she is simply merciless ; towards the phil- 
anthropists and missionaries she is absolutely fa- 
natical.’ ’ 

“ But to you, Amice ! ” I said ; “ She is changed 
to you. Y ou have had some encounters, I am sure.” 

“Yes,” she said. “I was firm about Chloe and 
the Wesleyan meetings. I said Chloe had lost all 
she loved in the world but me, and had saved me, 
life and soul, as Granny knew, left a motherless child 
in that perilous climate, in the midst of that hard- 
ening, iniquitous system. I said Chloe had only 
that one delight, those prayer-meetings of Beuben 
Pengelly’s, where they prayed prayers and sang 
hymns she could understand, and that this Chloe 
must not be robbed of.” 

“ And you did not succeed ? ” 

“ I did succeed wfith Granny. She was very 
angry. She stormed and raged at me ; but she 
said Chloe might go, at her peril and at mine. 
She had been brought up in devil-worship and it 
was but natural she should like it. For that the 


362 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Methodists set on the slaves to deeds of devils 
there was not the shadow of a doubt.” 

“ So Chloe went again ? ” 

“ No, Chloe would not go. She laughed and 
cried, and asked if I thought the dear Lord could 
only be found at meetings. The prayers were 
good; but soon we should get where we were be- 
yond praying ; and the hymns were good, very 
good, and very comforting, and we should have 
plenty of them soon. Was she going to make 
missis and missie at war because of her getting a 
little bit of comfort a little bit sooner ? Was that 
like the good Lord ? And so Chloe will not go.” 

“ And Madam Glanvil still persists that the 
negroes if different from brutes, are only different 
because they can be savages ? ” 

“ Yes, you know, she always persists. The per- 
sistence is from within ; anything outside does not 
affect it. The trial is to love both, Bride — Granny 
and the slaves, and the missionaries ; oppressor and 
oppressed ; to love all, and to be able to help none.” 

“ That will not last long,” I said. 

“ Not always,” she replied. a But it does last 
rather long. However I have found some com- 
fort.” 

She went up the ladder, and took down a book 
from the shelves ; a clumsy, badly bound old book, 
on yellow, coarse paper, in what seemed to me 
Black Letter. For at that time the German lan- 
guage as little formed an ordinary part of an Eng- 
lish girl’s acquirements as Sanscrit. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


363 


It was a German narrative of the missions of 
the United Brethren, the Unitas Fratrum , called 
Moravians. 

u At last I have found the Christians who take 
up the cross, the real hard, heavy, disgraceful, 
slave’s cross,” she said, “ and care for people just 
because no one else does ; the Christianity that can 
help me, and the Christians who have helped my 
poor slaves.” 

I took the homely old books in my hand ; the 
first German books 1 had ever handled. What a 
world of difference that implies in our English 
thought and education ! 

Coleridge was at this very time making his 
first dive into that great river of German thought, 
itself but recently issued from its subterranean 
course to the daylight. Three years before he had 
gone to study at Gottingen, but his translation or 
paraphrase of Schiller’s “Wallenstein” had cer- 
tainly not reached Abbot’s Weir ; and Clapham 
was too busy with its own literature of edification, 
and its edification of the world, white and black, to 
leave much leisure for any other literature of edi- 
fication, still less for any literature which it would 
have regarded as not tending to edification at all. 

“ They are queer, clumsy old books,” said 
Amice. “ They look as if my good Brethren had 
had them printed and bound in some experimental 
brotherly workshop, as I dare say they had.” 

u They look as quaint and dry and old-fashion- 


364 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ed as some of Loveday’s Quaker books,” I said. 
u And very likely they are as living and true.” 

“As fresh and living as the New Testament, 
almost, they seemed to me,” she said, kissing one 
of them — “ a great deal fresher and younger than 
the Apostolic fathers, except Ignatius, and bits of 
that epistle to Diognetus.” She had explored so 
many odd corners of thought in that library. 
“ And it is such a comfort they are in German,” she 
added, “ because Granny is not suspicious of them, 
as she has grown to be of some of my books. Un- 
fortunately (no, not unfortunately !) she discovered 
the other day a copy of John Wesley’s ‘ Thoughts 
upon Slavery,’ and threw it into the fire. How- 
ever, she had read it first. She had read it through, 
and the plain, strong English has sunk into her 
conscience, I know, as it did into mine ; for she is 
continually bringing out bits of it to worry, or to 
throw at me, by which I know they worry her. 
Anti-slavery societies will never create a nobler ap- 
peal than that. I know much of it, happily, by 
heart, as Granny does by conscience. 

“ Can human law turn darkness into light , or 
evil into good f he writes. Notwithstanding ten 
thousand laws , right is right , and wrong is wrong 
still ; there must still remain an essential difference 
between justice and injustice , cruelty and wrong. 

“ One by one, besides, it answers all Granny’s 
favorite arguments. 

“ ‘ You say , It is necessity ! ’ he says, speaking 
of the dreadful slave-stealing and slave ships. I 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


365 


answer , You stumble at the threshold. “ I 
deny that villany is ever necessary. A man cam 
he under no necessity of degrading himself into a 
wolf. You say the blacks are stupid and wicked. 
It is you who have kept them stupid and wicked .’ 

“ 4 Yon call your forefathers wolves, 5 said Gran- 
ny, in un confessed reply to this. ‘ You say we 
made the slaves stupid and wicked. That is what, 
in modern days, is called filial piety ! 5 

“ ‘ It is necessary to my gaining a hundred 
thousand pounds ,’ Wesley goes on, dramatizing 
the obj ector . ‘ 1 deny that your gaining a thousand 
is necessary to your present or eternal happiness .’ 

“‘The Methodists are Anabaptists — Commu 
nists, 5 says Granny. ‘ They would reduce every 
one to their own beggarly level. 5 

“ ‘It is necessary for the wealth and glory oj 
England , 5 Mr. Wesley continues, still quoting the 
objector. ‘ Wealth is not necessary to the glory 
of any nation , 5 he replies ; 1 wisdom , virtue , jus- 
tice , mercy , generosity, public spirit , love of our 
country — these are necessary to the glory of a na- 
tion , hut abundance of wealth is not” 

“Glorious old John Wesley,” I said, parentheti- 
cally. “ I wonder if they have read that book at 
Clapham ? 55 

“ Granny has read that, at all events,’ 5 she 
replied. “ I know it because she called Mr. Wes- 
ley a traitor to his country, worse than a French- 
man, — whether a Jacobite or a Jacobin, she is not 
clear — probably both in the germ. However, the 


366 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


book has burnt itself in. What I long to know 

is, if the tender appeal at the end to the hearts of 
the slaveowners, and to God for help to the help- 
less, has touched her. I think it must. It is 
good, Bride, to have the planters appealed to as if 
they also had souls and hearts. Sometimes I 
think some of your anti-slavery friends a little 
forget that. It is difficult to love oppressor and 
oppressed as doth human creatures ; after all, both 
astray and lost, and sorely in need of help. Per- 
haps there is some good, after all, in having to do 

it, not with one’s wise, philanthropical heart only, 
but with one’s foolish, trembling, quivering, natural 
heart, as I cannot help doing ; painful as it is.” 

Then, hugging her clumsy German books to 
her heart, as she might a living creature that felt 
being petted, she took me up stairs into her bedroom 
— that delightful old room in the oldest gable of 
the old Elizabethan house, partly in the roof, with 
low mullioned windows, looking far over the woods 
and the river to the grey moorland hills. 

On the floor were piled heaps of books on all 
subjects, in many languages. Amice had no fancy 
for dainty fittings. Her luxuries were of another 
kind from those of Cousin Crichton’s house ; poeti- 
cal, rather than comfortable, or picturesque. 

The sole luxuries of that room were the capa- 
cious old escritoire, that had belonged to her father, 
with a fascinating treasury of small drawers and 
pigeon-holes, and a desk that drew out ; and those 
ever-increasing heaps of books which were poor 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 337 

Chloe’s distraction ; with that low window-seat on 
which we had spent so many hours of talk, in 
winter twilights, or in the heat of summer noons. 

“ Now,” she said, as we seated ourselves, “ I 
will tell you the history of me and my German 
books. When you went away last January, and 
I had nothing but books left to talk out my heart 
to, I came, in a corner of a cupboard of the library, 
on some records of the Missions of u the people 
called Moravians” in Greenland and in the West 
Indies. And I saw that the first mission to the 
West Indies was begun by a man called Leonhard 
Dober, a Moravian potter from Herrnhut, who, on 
a journey to Denmark with Count Zinzendorf, met 
a West Indian negro slave, and was so touched with 
compassion for the misery of those poor helpless 
blacks, that he set his whole heart on going to tell 
them they had a Saviour. He set his heart on 
this so fixedly, that being told by objectors there 
was no other way of teaching the slaves but by 
becoming a slave, he proposed to become a slave 
himself \ that, driven to the daily toil with them 
working in the plantations among them, and shar- 
ing their burdens, he might by any means save 
some of them. It seemed to me as absolutely 
taking up the Cross and following Christ as any- 
thing in this world ever was.” 

“ Did he do it ? ” I asked. 

“ My English book did not say. It stopped 
just there. But in the same cupboard I found 
some German books which, by the words TJnitas 


368 AGAINST THE STREAM. 

Fratrxim on the outside, I knew must be about 
these same Moravians. Of course I was deter- 
mined to find out, and if one has set one’s mind on 
finding out anything, of course one does not let a 
language stand in one’s way. Granny seeing me 
one day with those books, gave a little sigh, and 
shook her head pathetically, for her. 

“ ‘ Poor foolish Aunt Prothesea ! ’ said she. 
‘Yes, that comes of being wilful, and taking 
up with strange notions. She went to London 
and met a crazy foreigner who called himself a 
Count, as they generally do. And this Count 
made her as crazy as himself. Some new religion 
he had, not altogether Popish or Protestant. They 
used crucifixes, and lived in communities ; not 
exactly monasteries, for they married ; which was, 
of course, better than being monks and nuns — unless 
they married the wrong people, which poor Aunt 
Prothesea did. She went to some unpronounce- 
able place in Saxony, married someone they called 
an Elder of the Church, not ill-born, they said, 
but older, at all events, than herself about half 
a century, I believe. And naturally he died ; and 
unnaturally she pined for her Elder. They put 
her into a widows’ house, as they called it, and she 
didn’t like it ; who would ? To be classified like 
the vicar’s beetles ; or like adjectives and substan- 
tives in the grammar ; or like all the people who 
are one eyed and one-armed ; classified, and penned 
up with a lot of women. So she came back to 
Court, and had a room given her ; your room it 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


369 


was, by-the-bye. And I remember she brought 
back a heap of ridiculous foreign books with her 
not only not in a language, but not in an alphabet 
any rational person can read. 5 You know, Granny 
thinks all foreign languages either an impertinence 
or a joke ; and would consider it an intolerable 
affectation to attempt to pronounce them in any- 
thing but English fashion. 

“ But did she tell you anything more about the 
books ? ” 

“ She said they were half in that cupboard in 
the library, and half in an old closet in the wall in 
my bedroom. And there I found all I wanted , 
a dictionary, German and Latin it was, and a 
grammar, German and French. And so, all this 
summer, Bride, you having deserted me, I have 
been living with my great Aunt Prothesea, and 
her United Brethren. And you cannot think 
how doubly delightful this old room has become 
to me, or what a companion and friend my great 
aunt has become to me. I read the hymns as if 
she sang them to me. They are marked and un- 
derlined, Bride ; in more than one page, stained as 
if with tears. And I read the old u Berlinische 
Peden ” of Count Zinzendorf ; and better still, some 
older books by Martin Luther ; letters, table-talk, 
sermons, commentaries. They are so strong and 
daring, so quivering with life, those words of Mar- 
tin Luther, so delightfully one-sided, and so glo- 
riously many-sided ; one side at a time, I mean — 
unguarded, unbalanced, bold, full, free, like the 
24 


370 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


Bible, and then a thousand other sides, like our 
human hearts, like the Bible, and like no other relig- 
ious books that I know. Not a bit of grey in them, 
not a neutral tint ; every color and every tint 
and every shade, to meet all the countless shades 
and colors, the countless thirsts and hungers, and 
joys and sorrows of our hearts.” 

“ But Luther was not a Moravian ?” I said. 
How dim the name of Luther was to me ! like a 
mere Heading in a catalogue ; and to Amice he 
was a living man — yes, living, then and now, 
once and forever ? 

“ No, certainly,” she said ; “ Luther was not a 
Moravian. He was Luther. Nor am I a Mora- 
vian,” she added, with her little quick dropping of 
laughter. “ I am Amice Glanvil, your Amice. 
Your Amice, who goes to church every Sunday, 
and has no intention of becoming an adjective, or 
an atom, in any community, married or unmarried, 
even the best in the world. Were you afraid I was 
in process of transformation ? ” 

I had been a little afraid as to what those curi- 
ous black letters might lead. They connected 
themselves in my mind in some unreasonable way 
with black arts and mystical ideas. There were 
Jacob Bohme, Swedenborg, and sundry mystical 
and unutterable Teutonic personages, of whom I 
had a vague idea that they were a kind of Protest- 
ant Simeon Stylites, or Faqueers, who, in some 
symbolical way, adapted to European practicabili- 
ties, lived on pillars, or stood permanently on one 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


371 


leg, or symbolically stretched out one arm until it 
grew immovable, or contemplated “ the Silent 
Nothing,” or the everlasting No, or their own con- 
sciousness, until consciousness ceased to be con- 
scious. 

Moreover, I had some idea that Reuben Pen- 
gelly had once spoken doubtfully of the Moravians, 
as “ Antinomians,” whatever that meant, or as op- 
ponents of Mr. Wesley, which was Reuben’s strong- 
est form of Anathema. 

Amice admitted that this was true. Rut she told 
me that the Wesleys had first learned the possibil- 
ity of a liberating and gladdening religion from 
seeing the fearlessness of some Moravians in a 
storm, on the voyage across the Atlantic. She said 
that as far as she could understand the matter, Mr. 
Wesley and Count Zinzendorf were both kings, and 
that it being simply impossible that they should 
both reign in one kingdom, the division of the king- 
dom had become a necessity ; but that the differ- 
ence of opinion which divided them was a mere 
accident. 

She thought they meant essentially the same 
on the very point on which they separated. Indeed, 
Mr. Wesley himself had said to the Count, at one 
moment, that tlfe difference between them was only 
one of words. 

Mr. Wesley contended for growth in holiness, 
and possible perfection , by which he seemed to mean 
a state in which holiness became instinctive. 

Count Zinzendorf contended for holiness as 


372 


AGAINST TEE STREAM, , 


being not so much a commandment as & promise 
to the Christian ; in other words, for faith in Christ 
as making the desire of holiness instinct ; for 
sanctification, not as a constrained work , as the 
spontaneous free fruit of the Spirit. 

Both looked on holiness as the great aim and 
the great promise ; both looked to Christ as its 
source ; both regarded faith as the surrender of the 
whole being, the dependence of the whole being 
on God, as the means. 

If there was a difference, it was that Wesley 
looked on this free, glad, instinctive goodness as 
the attainment of the advanced saint, Zinzendorf 
as the right of the simplest child who lives by the 
new life ; that Wesley dwelt on the Christian life 
more as a warfare— the Moravians more as a growth ; 
on the resisting evil, the Moravians more on the 
conquest of evil by good. 

Amice at all events had evidently found her in- 
tellectual element in the German literature, and 
her especial spiritual element in that old book of 
German hymns. Her beautiful, white spirit-wings 
seemed to expand and grow strong in it. 

I cannot say whether there may not have been 
some unreasonable and exaggerated hymns among 
them. I have yet to find the hymn-book which I 
should not think enriched by omissions. 

But, first through Amice’s sympathetic transla- 
tions, and afterwards by their own simple pro- 
found, inimitable words, those hymns have grown 
into a portion of my own life ; so that I feel as un- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


373 


able to judge them critically as the voices which 
sang me lullabies in infancy. To her, I believe, 
the original attraction was the contrast of their pro- 
found peace to the war in her own heart and life ; 
the contrast of their simplicity and singleness of 
aim with her natural tendency to see everything in 
its subtlest relations, and on every side. 

“ Redemption, liberation, reconciliation, atone- 
ment, breathe through every line,” she said. “ Re 
demption, liberation, reconciliation in Him who is 
the Redeemer, the Mediator, the Sacrifice, the Suf- 
ferer, the Conqueror, but most of all the Sufferer, 
with us, for us, in us ; and all never for one in- 
stant to be separated, or to be conceived of, to all 
eternity, as separate from Him.” 

Their theology is Jesus : — 

“ Du dessen mensclilich Leben, 

Das unsere selig maclit ; 

Du dessen Geist aufgeben 
Den Geist uns wieder bracht 

Den wir verloren balten ; 

Du unser Fleiscb und Be-in ; 

Acli unter deinem Scbatten 
Ist’s gut ein Mensch zu seyn” 

“ Yes,” she said, “ under His shadow it is good, 
good, — good for ever, everywhere, and for every 
one, to be a liuman creature ; good for me, for 
Chloe, for all.” 

“ And those are the words my poor widowed 
Aunt Prothesea loved,” she said. “ I smile some- 
times when I think how sorrowful and stricken they 
thought her, and how her heart must have sung, 


374 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


and been at rest here over these dear old books, 
in this dear old room.” 

“ And these are the words, Bride, in which 
Leonhard Dober taught our poor black slaves. 
Bor I found the end of that story. He went in 
spite of all discouragement to those poor outcasts, 
not exactly as a slave, but poor, despised, as one 
ready to be, in all things except sin, one with them. 
He reached those poor broken hearts. ‘Sweet, 
too sweet,’ they said, ‘ are the tidings you bring 
to us.’ 

* That deep abyss of blessed love 
In Jesus Christ to us unsealed * 

was unsealed to hundreds of those parched and 
weary hearts. So easy it was to them to confess 
themselves to be ‘ nothing,’ wretched, sinful ! In 
Antigua the planters acknowledged that Chris- 
tianity as taught by the Moravians made the ne- 
groes worth twice as much as slaves. And now 
there are congregations of Christian negroes in 
many of the islands ; some Moravian and some 
Methodist. Zinzendorf’s followers and Wesley’s 
do agree there. Ah, Bride, I often think, if we 
could get down low enough, we should all agree 
here ; as when we get up high enough we shall 
all agree there.’’ 

“ But Bride,” she added, “ I have a little hid- 
den hope, that it seems almost a treachery to you 
to have ; yet almost a treachery if I have it, to 
hide from you.” 

We were sitting on that low window-seat. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 375 

The moon had come up and was shimmering in a 
quiet pool of the river below. 

A shiver w^ent to my heart, as she took my two 
hands according to a custom of hers, and pressed 
them against her face. 

“ I cannot set my slaves free yet,” she said 
“ whatever you or Piers may think. The fines, 
legal expenses, etc., for setting them free, would 
take more than the estate is worth, and after all 
the poor enfranchised creatures would be left quite 
helpless, and might become the slaves of any av- 
aricious white who chose to claim them. It is 
more than mere money that I want one day to 
give to my slaves.” 

u I know, I know ! ” I said, “ you want to give 
your life, yourself. You want to be a martyr. I 
do wish, I almost wish — your Aunt Prothesea 
had died before her Elder, in Germany, and all 
her books had been buried with her. I cannot, 
cannot part with you, Amice. How can 1 1 Piers 
will marry — and every one else will die or change. 
How can I let you go, and go there ? For the 
blacks are savages, and the planters are some of 
them worse.” 

“ I shall not go, I hope, Bride,” she said, smil-, 
ing, “ until I am sent ; — and when I am sent you 
will have to help send me. And you will. You 
will help me more than any one, as you always do. 
And meantime if I have a taste for martyrdom, I 
think it may be gratified as easily, in my small 
way, here as in the West Indies. Only my Mo- 


376 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ravians will not hear of self-denial. 4 Do you 
think it was self-denial to the Lord Jesus,’ Count 
Zinzendorf said to John Wesley, ‘when he came 
down from heaven to rescue a world ? 5 No, Bride 
it was love , and that swallows up everything ; and 
first of all self \ which it has not done yet for me.’’ 




CHAPTER XXV 



IERS and I were very full ol our project 
of establishing a Sunday-school. 

The word has not certainly, in these 
days, an exciting or a romantic sound. 
It does not exactly represent an “advanced ” phase 
of philanthropy. 

But to us in Abbot’s Weir, in those days, it 
represented an advance which to Piers and me, 
and to Claire and Amice, was more exciting than 
any romance. To the conservative element of 
Abbot’s Weir it represented an element of prog- 
ress, most daring, not to say Utopian and Chimer- 
ical. “Utopian” was my Uncle Fyford’s term, 
“ Chimerical ” Mr. Rabbidge’s. 

“ You will lift people out of their places,’’ said 
my uncle, “and upset all orderly arrangements, 
until the country will be as unsettled as France. 
The principles of the Christian religion should be 
inculcated from the pulpit, as I endeavor to do. 
If sacred things are to be taught to ignorant infants 
by boys and girls, what becomes of their solem- 
nity ? And what guarantee have you they are not 


378 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


teaching heresy and schism ? My opinion is that 
yon will find these schools nurseries of separa- 
tists.” 

“ But mothers have to teach, Uncle Fyford,” 
1 said. 

“ Then let mothers teach, my dear,” he replied, 
“ the clergy, and parents, are undeniable author- 
ities. Indeed, the more I think of it the more it 
seems to me a decidedly dangerous disturbance of 
the designs of Providence.” 

“ But you cannot teach all the children, Uncle 
Fyford, and the mothers don’t. If we only taught 
them the Catechism and a little of the Bible, it 
could hardly be heresy ; could it? We can send 
them to say the Catechism and their texts to you 
when they know them.” 

“ Thank you, my dear. But really I am not 
used to children, and the duties of my office are 
onerous enough already.” 

“ We thought so, uncle. And so, you will let 
us try and help you a little ? Perhaps you would 
even set us a few lessons ? Or you will examine 
the children, and give the prizes, if they deserve 
any ? ” 

“ My dear, lessons for little children are really 
not in my w’ay.” If you do indeed keep to the 
Catechism and the Bible — the Gospels — I should 
say, I daresay, after all, you will not go far 
wrong. 

“ You could always come and see us, you know, 
Uncle Fyford. And if you can only grant us the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


379 


great favor we have to ask you, we shall be with- 
in easy reach. We want the old room near the 
Abbey Gatehouse for our schoolroom to begin 
with.” 

“ My dear, it is a den of rubbish.” 

But he went with us, and soon his constructive 
mind was quite interested in the capabilities of 
the place, which we, with Dick’s aid, had previ- 
ously critically explored. There were blocked up 
windows which could easily be opened ; and with 
a little hoarding for the floor, and a little repair- 
ing of the roof, a fire-place, and a few benches and 
books, a desk and a bell, our preparations would 
soon be complete. 

“ Well, I suppose I cannot refuse you, Bride,” 
he said, half good-humoredly and half resentfully. 
“Your c Rights of Man ’ perverted you to getting 
your own way too long ago. But it is rather a 
pity I did not make the discovery before. It 
would have made an excellent museum for my 
Coleoptera. The scheme is certainly Utopian. 
But perhaps the world is a little better on the 
whole for some people having, or having had, 
Utopian schemes.” 

Mr. Rabhidge looked on the whole experiment 
from a high and philosophical point of view. 

“ My dear young lady,” he said, pointing to 
several shelves of those ponderous folios, in which 
to him the delights of possession and of perpetual 
search were blended, “look at those venerable 
volumes. They represent the theological re- 


380 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


searches of the wisest men of many centuries. 
Each of them imagined he had reached a conclu- 
sion on which Christendom might repose, and be 
at accord. And you see Christendom is not at re- 
pose or at accord. And you hope to make all this 
plain to babes in a few broken hours ! It does 
sound a little chimerical.” 

“ But, Mr. Itabbidge,” I said, “ the babes have 
to grow up and to be good, if they can. And we 
cannot wait until the folios are finished, and Chris- 
tendom is at repose, can we, to try and help 
them ? ” 

“ Theology is a difficult science for young la- 
dies to handle,” he replied, “ although it is one 
which every tinker used to think he. could fathom, 
and which, for the feminine mind, seems to pos 
sess irresistible attractions.” 

“ We do not want to teach them theology, if 
that means the contents of all those folios,” I said, 
“I am sure. How can we dream of such a 
thing ? We want to teach them something about 
Christianity ; how God has loved us, and how we 
can show our love to Him.” 

“ Christianity also is a large word, Miss Bride,” 
he said, “and has many aspects. This scheme, I 
repeat, seems to me a little chimerical. Moreover, 
I confess I consider it rather an interference with 
the order of nature to take the children from their 
parents for religious instruction. But I have no 
doubt it will do the babes good to be an hour or 
two every Sunday with you and your brother. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


381 


And,” lie added pathetically, “ I hope you will 
find the instruction of youth an easier avocation 
than I have.” 

Miss Felicity’s opposition was more immovable. 
“ What are parents for,” said she, u if they are not 
to teach their children religion? And what are 
Sundays for if they are not to give poor working 
people one day to spend with their families ? I 
consider the plan at once Jacobinical and tyranni- 
cal, upsetting parental authority, and intruding on 
family life. Depend upon it, the poor children 
will learn two things in your Sunday-schools, to 
despise their parents and to dress like their betters. 
And meantime you set the mothers free to idle 
and gossip away the day as they like. If you want 
to teach any one, teach the mothers to mend the 
rags, not to gossip and scold, and to keep their 
homes tidy.” 

My father undertook our defence on this occa- 
sion. 

a Miss Felicity, you would scarcely set Bride 
to teach the mothers as they are. And in teach- 
ing the children you know she is teaching the fa- 
thers and mothers that are to be. Let us hope the 
Sunday-schools will succeed so well that in the 
next generation none will be wanted.” A hope 
which did not seem as Utopian to us in those days 
as it does now. 

Thus even so humble and peaceful a mode of 
reformation as Sunday-schools was begun “ against 
the stream.” 


382 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


In the town opinions were divided. Fortu- 
nately our family was too well known for us to be 
suspected, as Mrs. Hannah More had been a few 
years before in a similar undertaking at Cheddar, 
of seeking to “ entrap the children in order to sell 
them as slaves.” Hor did our fame, or the extent 
of our operations, expose us to the self-contradic- 
tory charges brought against her of “ disaffection 
against Church and State,” of “ abetting sedition,” 
of “ praying for the success of the French,” and 
of “ being paid by Mr. Pitt.” 

Moreover, Mrs. Hannah More and her gener- 
ous sisters were pioneers, and the success of her 
labors, closely following those of Mr. Haikes and 
others, had made Sunday-schools appear rather 
less of an extravagance. I often think that per- 
haps those self-denying and calumniated labors 
among the “ actual savages ” of the Mendips, may 
outlive all those books of hers which were wel- 
comed with a chorus ot adulation by bishops, 
priests, and statesmen. u Aut Morus aut angelus ” 
might be written with more permanent letters on 
these than (as they were) by Bishop Porteus on 
her “Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable 
World.” 

In our part of the country, moreover, the Wes- 
leyan s had been at work for fifty years, and the 
discovery of the treasures contained in the Bible 
had inspired hundreds and thousands of our west 
country miners and laborers with the determina- 
tion to learn to read it. Convince any body of 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


383 


people that there is something infinitely well worth 
reading, and they will find some way to learn how 
to read. Let any number of people have some- 
thing worth writing, friends who care to he writ- 
ten to, and the means of communication, and they 
will learn to write. 

The religious revival among the people of Eng- 
land came before the educational movement, and 
gave it at once its stimulus and its food. Our ed- 
ucational aspirations indeed were of the most mod- 
erate. Hannah More herself entirely disclaimed 
the idea of teaching the poor to write. “ She had 
no intention,” she apologetically assured one of her 
episcopal correspondents, “ of raising the poor above 
their station.” 

And we had decidedly no presumptuous inten- 
tions of surpassing Mrs. More. Indeed we were 
not attempting week-day schools at all. The body 
of religious literature with which we began was 
not ambitious — Mrs. Hannah More’s “ Church 
Catechism, broken into short questions,” the New 
Testament and the Prayer-Book, a spelling-book, 
and Watts’s Hymns for Infant Minds : pictures we 
did not possess. 

But it was a great innovation ; and our dear 
old England, conservative to the tips of her fingers 
in those Jacobinical days, did suspect us very 
much, and resentfully wonder what new-fangled 
treason we were plotting at Abbot’s Weir. - 

Of the two “ vested interests ” we had to con- 
tend with, the parents and the Dames of the day- 


384 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


schools, the parents were divided, and not inac- 
cessible in a slow way to conviction ; but the 
Dames naturally were nnanimons and entirely im- 
movable. They said the gentry were going to 
take their bread out of their mouths, and put grand 
empty words into the mouths of the children. In 
vain we protested that we did not mean to inter- 
fere with one of their schools, but only to keep 
the children in order for them. The Dames were 
wiser in their generation than we were. Thev 
said we should make the children discontented 
with them, and no one could say where it would 
end. Education, they felt, and felt very sagacious- 
ly, as a means of maintenance for superannuated 
old women, would pass away, if it was to be re- 
garded primarily, not with reference to old women, 
but with reference to the children to be edu 
cated. As in so many reforms, the people to be 
reformed saw more clearly whither these reforms 
tended than the reformers. 

The West Indian planters foresaw the emanci- 
pation of the slaves, when the abolitionists only 
intended the extinction of the slave-trade. 

The Dames of Abbot’s Weir beheld in ago- 
nized vision vistas of day-schools — Lancastrian, 
British, National — and the abolition of Dames — 
while we only contemplated gathering a few chil- 
dren together on Sundays to teach them the Sermon 
on the Mount, Watts’s hymns, and the Catechism. 

In one sense the opponents of Hannah More 
were not so far wrong. The germs of a Revolu- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


385 


tion lay awaiting development, in the first of Mr. 
Baikes’s Sunday-schools. 

The Dames, therefore, were naturally implaca- 
ble. And looking back, in my heart 1 pity them 
more, certainly, than we did at the time. The 
gradual passing away of one industry after another 
by which poor bereaved toiling women could, by 
work in their homes, keep their homes together, 
has its darkly pathetic side. And after half a cen- 
tury of experience, the article manufactured in our 
wholesale national schools is not altogether so satis- 
factory as to bear no competition. 

If Dames could be rendered efficient, I am in- 
clined to believe girls at all events would be more 
effectively taught the things best worth a woman’s 
learning, in small individual clusters than in great 
roughly classified crowds. 

And if fathers and mothers could or would teach 
their children at home, I am sure no Sunday-school 
could or can compare with the moral and spiritual 
results of such home teaching. 

But these two if 8 involve the Golden age. 

However, these considerations make me more 
tolerant to the Dames and the Parents of Abbot’s 
Weir, looking back from my old age than I was 
at the time in my sanguine youth. 

<£ Utopia ! ” What was there impossible in 
Utopia ? 

Piers and I, and Amice, and Beuben Pengelly, 
in that little school in the old abbey gatehouse, and 
the rest of us throughout England, were unsealing 
25 


386 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


a fountain which was to rise, and spread, and float 
Abbot’s Weir and England above all the rugged 
Ararats in the world, and begin a new era ! 

And the fountain of great waters did rise and 
did float England, as I believe, above many a peril, 
although that 

“ Divine event 

For which the whole creation waits ” 

seems scarcely yet in sight. 

Meantime the war with the Dames waxed hot/ 
The Dames moved the grandmothers in general, 
and the grandmothers moved the mothers ; and I 
scarcely know how it would have fared with us if 
Reuben had not adopted the Machiavelian policy 
of subsidizing the most intelligent and indignant of 
the Dames, the one who could read and write, to 
take charge of the babies in church. It was, Amice 
protested, an infant sacrifice to Moloch, for she 
declared that subdued sounds of woe, as from 
pinched and cuffed infants surreptitiously pinched 
during the singing of the Psalms, issued from the 
dame’s charge. But the stratagem answered. A 
split was created in the hostile cabinet. The 
babies grew up ; in due time the dame grew too 
feeble or too mild to pinch, and the subsequent 
babies were mercifully suffered to sleep on warm 
afternoons, if they did it quietly. 

Our beginnings, as in most undertakings that 
live, were small. We started with five teachers 
and ten children. 

The mothers brought the little ones, and left 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


387 


them, not without anxious exhortations to us, and 
many encouragements to the children. They evi- 
dently regarded it as a loan in concession to some 
fancy of ours, for which the subjects deserved com- 
pensation. 

One woman only addressed her exhortations to 
the child, and her encouragements to us, 

“ If you can make anything of he, Miss Bride, 
it’s more than his father or me can, or the dame, 
and sure enough, you’re right welcome to him.” 

A challenge which greatly stimulated our am- 
bition. 

A beginning was all that was needed. 

Amice, herself permitted to come only under 
a kind of commission of lunacy (Madam Glanvil 
protesting that the world being turned crazy, it 
was as well to encourage the least frantic of its 
delusions), took the youngest class, the babies, as 
we called them, although we had none under 
five. She said to me that the babies suited her 
and her theology best, and as by-and-by she 
hoped to have to do with the lowest class, the 
children among the races, it was the best train- 
ing for her. 

She painted them Bible pictures, she brought 
them flowers, she taught them in parables, and 
they certainly heard her gladly. Her class was 
the most popular of all. The difficulty was to 
get any one to grow out of it. 

Yet more than one darling little one did grow 
out of it into higher teaching than ours. Infant 


388 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


epidemics carried off far more in those days than 
now. 

In long after years reminiscences would be 
brought out to me, by mothers, of little hymns 
and sacred sayings of some lost darling, and of 
the name of Jesus, blended by infant lips with 
that of “ mother,” and of u Miss Amice,” as of 
One nearer, and dearer, and kinder, and better 
than all, to whom it was nothing strange or sad 
to go. 

And more than that, the hymns and texts 
the little ones had loved would be spelt over by 
lips and hearts often as simple, though not, in- 
deed, as innocent, as theirs ; and rough men would 
come to be taught the way the little lost child 
had found so pleasant, and to tread it, pleasant 
or hard, so as it led where they were gone. 

Claire did not join us, but she sought out many 
a stray lamb to send to us. 

The elder class fell to me ; and many a lesson 
I learned in trying to teach them ; among them, 
a greater allowance for my stepmother and Miss 
Felicity, and a general appreciation of the difficul- 
ties of teachers and parents, ministers, pastors, and 
masters, and all governing persons ; many a lesson 
also as to the defectibility of my own temper, and 
the fallibility and general vagueness of my own 
knowledge. 

For if there is no flattery so delicious as the 
attention of children, it is just because they are 
quite incapable of the flattery of pretending to 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


389 


attend when they are not interested, or of pre- 
tending to understand when they do not, or of 
accepting a rhetorical paraphrase instead of a clear 
explanation. 

The school soon grew, so that we had to trans- 
fer the boys to one of the large workshops at the 
Foundry. 

The girls soon became at home with me, as 
the lads did with Piers. They knew us already 
on so many sides, and we knew them. 

Amice and Piers and I found that we had to 
study the histories of the Bible in quite a new way, 
to make them real to our pupils, and to study the 
outer and inner world, nature and life, anew, to 
transfuse Christianity through them. 

And so, if we and our friends did not alto- 
gether make a new era in England or Abbot’s 
Weir, the little Sunday-school certainly made a 
new era for us, and I trust for not a few who 
came to it. 




CHAPTER XXVI. 

HROTJGHOTJT the winter of 1801, and 
the spring of 1802, the enthusiasm with 
which the people had welcomed the 
peace with France had been slowly 

cooling. 

By March, 1802, when the “ Definitive Treaty” 
of Amiens was announced, all idea of the peace 
being definitive had begun to fade away. 

The most immovable of Tories in those dreary 
days had the best of it in prognostication. Those 
whose hopes of human progress had been largest 
and most enduring, had to confess themselves most 
deluded. But few kept hold, through those terri- 
ble years of the failure of freedom and the triumph 
of falsehood, of “blood and fire, and vapor of 
smoke,” in which the last century set and the pres- 
ent rose, at once of faith in freedom and of trust 
in the loving rule of God. 

This world for Xapoleon Bonaparte, and the 
next for justice, and the just, seemed as much as 
the hopefulness of any could grasp. 

To my uncle Fyford and Madam Glanvil, in- 
deed, the question was entirely without clouds. 



AGAINST TEE STREAM . 


391 


“The French had given themselves up to the 
devil,’ f said Madam Glanvil, “ and the devil had 
been sent them in the person of Napoleon Bona- 
parte. It was quite clear, and all fair ; at least as 
regarded the French. And it would be quite clear 
for us if we did not resist the devil, that is, light 
the French, as the Bible told us.” 

My uncle Fyford, in more clerical and classical 
language, observed, “ The democracy of Paris has 
gone the way of all democracies — run to seed in 
despotism. If the democracy and the despotism 
are not to become universal, William Pitt and 
England will have to crush them.” 

France began to be embodied to us in the ter- 
rible form of the Corsican, terribly rising and 
growing gigantic before the eyes of the Democracy 
that* had evoked, and could not banish it. And, 
instinctively, England began to look around for 
some one princely will to encounter the foe. 

Men began to feel bad weather was ahead, and 
to ask, like St. Christopher, for “the strongest, 
that they might obey him.” 

“ 11 parle en roi ,” said our ambassador, the 
Marquis of Cornwallis, writing of Napoleon from 
Paris. There was no trace of Jacobinism in the 
new French constitution. No government could 
be more despotic. Also there was a concordat 
arranged by Napoleon between France and the 
Pope. 

“Boyalty without loyalty;” Madame des 
Ormes said, “ and religion without faith ! The 


392 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


republic was bad, but this vulgar new pomp, how 
can any one bear it ? ” 

Englishmen and Englishwomen in those first 
months of peace flocked to Paris, the Paris which 
since Englishmen saw it last had guillotined her 
king and queen, devoured brood after brood of her 
Pevolution, deluged her own streets, and Europe, 
with the best blood of France, adored the goddess 
of reason, established tutoy - ing and the abolition 
of ali titles, and now again was commanding men 
and women to call each other Madame and Mon- 
sieur {Madame being politely restored many 
months before Monsieur ), nay, was even said to 
be rising to the height of Monseigneur and Votre 
Altesse , and secretly preparing the Temple to 
Caesar in which her offerings for so many genera- 
tions were to be laid. 

Madame said mournfully, “ All can go back to 
France except her own children. And yet what 
should we find there ? Scarcely even ruins ; they 
will be buried under the new constructions. Yet 
I would give something for tidings of our old 
terres and the peasantry. The chateau is gone, 
and the lands are confiscated; but I think the 
people — some of them — would remember us affec- 
tionately.” 

After that Piers began to think of an expedi- 
tion to Paris. He set his whole heart on it, 1 
could see, although he spoke little. 

But to us the year 1802 was full of many 
events which prevented his departure. 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


393 


The timber trade had been much disturbed by 
the war ; my father had lost more than one cargo 
by privateers. Not a few of our merchants had 
effected a kind of Lynch law insurance by taking 
shares in privateers, paying themselves for piracies 
by robbing some one else. But this my father 
would never do. Piers, therefore, was peculiarly 
unwilling to ask him to incur any additional ex- 
pense for him. 

Moreover, Francis went to Oxford that year, 
which had involved many expenses, and among 
others the clearing out of Piers’ and my purses, to 
clear off all the various small debts he had con- 
tracted in the town. 

Piers hoped that an entirely fresh start and 
the relief which he imagined it must be to any 
one to have the burden of debt altogether lifted 
off, would be the best possible chance for Francis’s 
turning over a new leaf. 

Francis himself, of course, was completely of 
the same opinion. He seemed for once really 
grateful. 

“ It was more than brotherly,” he said, “ and 
he should never forget it.” 

He acceded with fervor to Piers’ declaration 
that this help was the very last secret help he 
would give. He admitted with decision that a 
young man at the university was in a totally dif- 
ferent position from a lad at school, and must of 
necessity be a totally different being. “ Besides, 
his allowance was ample, his outfit most elaborate 


394 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


— lie never could want anything beyond.” He 
smiled at Piers’ apprehensions. “ In fact, although 
he did not like to promise too much, he intended 
that neither Piers nor I should in the end be losers 
by our most generous conduct.” 

So the summer passed, without Piers seeing 
any means of accomplishing his journey. 

But in our little circle at Abbot’s Weir one act 
of Hapoleon wrought more indignation than any 
besides. This was his expedition to restore slavery 
in St. Domingo. 

All the previous winter Loveday Benbow had 
been watching with the deepest interest the move- 
ments of Toussaint L’Ouverture and his black re- 
public in Hayti. 

She thought, with thousands besides in Eng- 
land, that at last the despised negro race was about 
to manifest its capabilities. It was true that the 
supremacy of the whites had not been overthrown 
without bloodshed. This was to dear peace-loving 
Loveday the only doubtful feature. But if ever 
war was justifiable, it was to rescue the feeble and 
oppressed from slavery ; if Leonidas and Wilhelm 
Tell were heroes, Toussaint L’Ouverture’s banner 
was at least as pure. 

The negro government once established, all 
seemed going on peaceably and justly. The trust 
of the liberated negro in liberated France, liber- 
ator of nations, is as affecting to look back on as 
the betrayed confidence of a child. 

Looking back also, we can see that the whole 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


395 


movement was only too childlike ; the reverence 
of the long oppressed for the ability of the dom- 
inant white race only too great, the copying too 
exact. 

France had a republic, and permitted no title 
but citizen. Toussaint and St. Domingo must 
therefore have a republic, and the c^devant slaves 
own no dignity beyond that of citizen. Poor 
blind copies of what was in itself a poor parody 
of the institutions of grand old times and grand 
old races, without significance or foundation. Cit- 
izens who had been trained in no civic rights, had 
no civic life, indeed, no civilization except the thin- 
nest crust of French polish ! 

Then France instituted a First Consul. Imme- 
diately, Toussaint L’Ouverture proclaimed himself 
First Consul, and wrote to the First Consul (in- 
tending it as a compliment), “ The first of the 
Bloclcs to the first of the Whites .” 

Napoleon responded by a sarcasm, and an 
army. “ He would not hme military honors as- 
sumed ,” he said “ by apes and monkeys .” 

It is easy to see now how thin and imitative that 
black republic was ; but its very childishness only 
makes its history in some ways more pathetic. To 
us, then, fondly catching at any sign of capability 
in our poor blacks, it seemed like the inauguration 
of a new era. 

Cousin Harriet wrote enthusiastically from Clap- 
ham. “ Some people,” she said, “ thought Tous- 
saint L’Ouverture was inaugurating a new era, not 


396 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


only for the negroes and the West Indies, but for 
the Church and the world. Some one had said that 
the negro race would probably commence a new age 
of Christianity. The Eastern Churches had had 
their age of subtle thought and elaborate dogma, 
and the Latin and German races had shown the 
strength and ability of man. The negro race might 
be destined to manifest his gentler virtues ; to de- 
velop on earth for the first time the sublime and 
lowly morality of the Sermon on the Mount. 
Greeks had taught us how to think, Homans how 
to fight, negroes would teach us how to suffer and 
to forgive.” 

It was a golden vision. 

Only, as Amice suggested and Loveday mourn- 
fully admitted, they had not exactly begun in San 
Domingo with forgiving. However, the forgiving 
might no doubt come afterwards. 

Madam Glanvil was naturally much irritated at 
the whole thing. 

She was almost reconciled to Hapoleon for char- 
acterizing the negro republicans as “ apes.” “ Apes 
and monkeys they were,” said she, “ only he might 
have carried the comparison a little further home 
The French aped the Greeks and Eomans, Brutus 
and his assassins, and now they seemed likely to ape 
Csesar, and more successfully ; and the blacks aped 
the French. There was a difference ; the French 
did it better. But apes they were, all alike.” 

Indeed Madam Glanvil had difficulty at times 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


397 


in not taking Napoleon Bonaparte as her hero. 
They had many points in common. 

To her the great authorization of the C( powers 
that be ” is that they be powers. Had Napoleon 
been a Bourbon, she said, there would have been 
no revolution. In his sarcasms against the repub- 
lican theorists she greatly rejoiced. 

His “ Je ne mux point d? ideologues expressed 
her convictions better than any formula previous- 
ly invented. 

She was not a little inclined to agree with him, 
that the swallowing up of Piedmont and the Yalais 
were “ deux miser dbles bagatelles” not worth our 
disturbing ourselves about. 

If he would have let England alone, she would 
have willingly consented to leaving the rest of the 
world, black and white, alone with him. 

“ Those foreigners,” she said , u will never under- 
stand either loyalty or liberty, or a constitution. 
Some one is sure to tyrannize over them and make 
them uncomfortable. What does it matter who ? ” 

But England was rising slowly to another mind. 

In the spring of 1802 my cousins wrote me 
again, mentioning the threatened French expedi- 
tion against San Domingo. “ Can you believe 
it ? ” they said. “ English merchants have been 
base enough to assist in it with transports. Mr. 
Wilberforce remonstrated in the House of Com- 
mons ; but Mr. Addington responded very lan- 
guidly. Papa says we must have Mr. Pitt back, 
or everything will be lost — honor, commerce, ne- 


398 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


groes, and England.” They said there must be 
meetings everywhere ; the people everywhere 
must be roused and instructed. They only needed 
to know. 

“ Gould you not get up a meeting in Abbot's 
Weir for the abolition of the slave trade f ” 

It was so easy to get up meetings at Clapham. 
My cousins had no idea wdiat a difficult thing they 
w T ere proposing. 

Father said of course we could. 

Piers said then of course we would . 

I felt ashamed of myself. I had thought so 
much of self-denials and tests of the reality of con- 
viction, as a little deficient at Clapham ; and here, 
at last, came a test, and I shrank back from it. 

For an anti-slavery meeting presided over, as 
it must be, by my father, meant, to me, banish- 
ment from Court ; and, to Amice, I knew not what, 
of perplexity and trial. 

I dared not say anything for or against. I only 
told Amice ; and she, after a pause, said what I 
knew she would say. 

“It must be done, Bride. You must do it, 
and you and I must bear it. Think,” she added, 
“if it was only the least little push onward to the 
lifting off of the terrible wrong ! What does it 
matter what little trials we have to suffer ? The 
wrong is there, the sin is there, the suffering is 
there, and that is the trial.” 

So I wrote, by my father’s desire, to Cousin 
Crichton to say we would do all we could — receive 


AGAINST TIIE STREAM. 


* 399 


the deputation, take the room, advertise the meet- 
ing, and explain its intention. 

The year wore on. The French expedition 
reached San Domingo in February. 

The reduction of the emancipated negroes to 
slavery was too plainly its object. Toussaint 
L’Ouverture and all the blacks understood it, and 
made a determined resistance ; not in vain, as a 
proof of what negroes well led could do, but ne- 
cessarily in vain as to success against the veteran 
brigades of the French Republic ; for the French- 
men they encountered were veterans, and were 
Republicans. The First Consul was believed to 
have a double object in view in this expedition ; 
to re-enslave the Black race, and to dispose of 
some troublesome Republican troops, which might 
be too austere to bend to his imperial purpose. 

In the last object he succeeded completely. 
About fifty thousand French soldiers were slain in 
the conflicts with the blacks, or perished of dis- 
ease between February, 1802, and December, 
1805. In the second object he succeeded but im- 
perfectly. Toussaint L’Ouverture, the noblest 
and ablest of the blacks, brave and not unmerci- 
ful; with his determination to liberate his own 
race, and his noble readiness to learn of the white 
race, whose superiority he acknowledged, was en- 
trapped by false promises, and sent to France to 
die of starvation. But the negroes continued the 
resistance under more savage leaders ; and in the 
end the last French general, Ferrand, abandoned 


400 • 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


by France, blew out bis brains “ in despair,’’ tbe 
Spaniards recovered tbe island, and slavery was 
established. 

In August, Toussaint L’Ouverture was thrown 
into the Prison of the Temple in Paris, thence 
transferred to the fortress of Joux, in a ravine of 
the Jura ; the victim we all felt of too frank a 
trust in the honor of the white men he believed 
in, yet had dared, and dared successfully, to re- 
sist. 

The lull of the parliamentary anti-slavery con- 
flict, which had lasted since Mr. Wilberforce’s de- 
feat in 1799, continued. All the more important 
was it that the struggle should not be suffered to 
be forgotten in the country, and the campaign 
be carried on in detail. Accordingly our anti- 
slavery meeting in Abbot’s Weir could not be de- 
ferred. 

My cousins wrote of it with enthusiasm. They 
considered it quite a fresh launch for Abbot’s 
Weir. Cousin Crichton himself was to come down 
to assist. At last, in October, the fatal day ar- 
rived. 

Large handbills had been posted on various 
friendly walls and gates for a fortnight. The old 
town-crier had rung his bell and sounded his 
a Oyez ! ” although that was by no means an 
effective way of trumpeting any fact. The room 
over the market-house had been engaged. 

Still Madam Glanvil had not apprehended 
the event which both Amice and I believed would 


\ 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 401 

involve a sentence of banishment from Court, 
for me and mine. 

The meeting was fixed for Monday. On the 
Saturday before Amice and I had a long walk 
in the woods of Court, the brown carpet of fallen 
leaves rustling under our feet, the gold and crim- 
son canopy of fading leaves above our heads grow- 
ing into a fine network, through which the blue 
sky shone on us ; while below the river rolled 
with its full autumn volume of sound. For some 
time I had avoided dining or spending the day in 
the house ; nor had Amice pressed it. W e felt it 
would have been a kind of treason to Madam 
Glanvil. Indeed, it was hard to know how far 
we ought to tell her what was intended. 

Our hearts were very heavy. Amice and I 
had often an opposite feeling as to the sympathy 
of nature. To-day this was especially the case. 

To me there seemed a deathlike weight on all 
the woods. The birds we startled flew with an un- 
easy cry from us like creatures who had no home 
to fly to. The river rolled sullenly on. Even the 
green fronds of the ferns were hidden under the 
withered and sodden leaves. Everything spoke 
of joys, and hopes, and life vanished. The very 
pomp was funereal. So often we had wandered 
about those woods together, free and glad ; and 
now we only seemed to creep through them like 
trespassers. 

I was very sad ; and it seemed to me, in my 


26 


402 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


childishness, all nature was sad too. But Amice 
entirely rejected the idea of such sympathy. 

“Nature is too old and wise to mewl and puke 
with her children like that,” said she. “ And she 
is also too grand and far-seeing. Our mother, if 
you choose to call her so, is a queen. She has her 
kingdom to care for, and if now and then she gives 
a kiss or a smile to our little miseries, it is all we 
can expect of her. She has seen so many such 
breakings of hearts healed. She is too stately and 
too busy, to heed our complainings overmuch. 
She knows nothing of death and parting. She 
only knows death as a phase of life. The dead 
leaves and flowers are dear to her as the cradle of 
next year’s leaves and flowers. If they were dead 
trees or forests she would not care more. She 
would wear them down into mould for new trees 
and forests, or perhaps into bogs and coal-mines. 
Nothing comes amiss to her. The war and torture 
even among her animals do not disturb her. She 
is very stately and philosophical, even if she does 
not enjoy it; like a matron of old Borne at the 
gladiatorial sights. She is healthy, and has strong 
nerves. And to imagine she would look downcast 
because you and I do not know what trouble to- 
morrow may bring ! ” 

We went home by the kitchen garden. We 
had determined to spend our half hour at the win- 
dow-seat in Amice’s bedroom. All kinds of first 
things came into our memory, as so often happens, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


403 


when we are, or think we are, on the verge of the 
last things. 

We passed the old damp mouldy arbor. 

“ Do you remember your portrait, Amice, the 
crocus bulb feeling for something to root itself in ? ” 

“ And do you remember,” she replied, “ putting 
your arm around me, and half sobbing, ‘ You mean 
me , Amice ? 5 so surprised and glad you were ! and 
then half sadly, ‘ only me — what ami?’” 

I remembered. 

“We have learned that only me would not 
quite do, Bride. Only One will do to rest one’s 
whole heart in. But your only me has been no 
little help. Ah, Bride, for how many years ! ” 

We went up to her room, hers and once her 
great-aunt Prothesea’s. We sat on the low win- 
dow-seat, and she read to me two stanzas of one 
of the German hymns : — 

“ Du bist der Hirt der Schwache tragt 
Aux Dick will ich mich legen, 

Du bist der Arzt der Kranke pfleght 
Erquicke mich mit Segen. 

Ich bin in Wahrheit schwach und siech 
Ach komm verbind’ und heile mich 
Und pflege den Elenden.” 

“ The Shepherd who carries the weak, and 
strengthens them by carrying,” she said. And 
then rising into a more joyous strain, she began : — 

“ Nun ich will mit Freuden 
Schen was Er thut 
Wie er mich wird ansehn 
Weil er dock niCkt ruht 




404 AGAINST THE STREAM. 

Bis er mir kann halten 
Seinen theuren Eid, 

Dass ich. noch soli werden 
Seine ganze Freud.” 

“ No,” she said, with a quiet triumph in her 
deep tones. “ He will not rest, until to us, even 
to us, He fulfils his dear oath, that we, even we, 
shall become through and through, altogether a 
joy, even to Him.” 

We sat some minutes silent, hand in hand, 
while through the open window came the colors 
of the autumn sunset, and the murmur of the 
river, and now and then a quiet song of a robin. 

“ Listen ! ” she said, “ I will call nature no 
more irreverent names. She sings all through our . 
sorrows, as the robin sings through the cold, as 
the white-robed multitudes in the Revelation sing 
on the Hallelujah, and “ again they cry Hallelu- 
jah,” through all the tumult of earth. She sings 
because she sees a hand within, an end beyond, a 
Face above. Or if she does not, we do, Bride ! 
We see, and at all events, through all, we will 
sing. Some sighing, I think, is singing ; and 
some silence is better, when patience and hope, 
who never seem long far apart from each other, 
make melody in the heart.” 




CHAPTER XXYII. 

I returned from Court that Satur- 
evening Cousin Crichton had ar- 
l. 

le was one of those people to whom 
his own favorite epithet, “ sound,” applied in every 
possible way. Health, heart, purse, judgment, 
doctrine, all with him were sound ; not a flaw any- 
where, nor an angle to make flaws in other peo- 
ple’s health, persons, or hearts ; his round, sound, 
solid personality made the world around him seem 
more solid and better balanced, as if it had another 
broad-shouldered Atlas to bear it up. 

Every one was in the state drawing-room. 
The amber furniture was uncovered. Mrs. Danes- 
combe, encompassed with crust after crust of 
clothes and conventionalities, a new tiara with an 
erect feather, a new silk that would “ stand alone,” 
and looked as if it would have liked it better. 
My father a little like an exiled potentate, as he 
always was in the amber drawing-room, trying to 
feel at home, and as little able to do it as the chairs 
placed at irregular angles with an elaborate pre- 



406 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


tence of being accustomed to be sat upon. And 
Cousin Crichton beaming with kind intentions 
and hospitality in esse or in posse, rubbing his 
hands with that effusive manner which always 
gave him the effect of being everybody’s host ; 
elaborately making the very best of Abbot’s Weir, 
the narrow streets, the little houses, our church, 
our hills, our old grey tower and chimes, in a way 
which gave one the impression that he was perpet- 
ually apologizing to Clapham for having been 
born in so insignificant a corner ; sanguine about 
the abolition meeting, about the peace, about 
everything, and yet all the while one could not 
but feel liable in the most placid manner, at every 
turn, to tread on all the uncomfortable toes of 
Abbot’s Weir, as unconsciously as if Abbot’s Weir 
had no toes to be trodden on. 

“Well, Bride,” he said, kissing me and laugh- 
ingly rubbing his hands, “ my fair Trappist, have 
you forgiven us yet for being so 4 terribly rich ’ at 
Clapham ? ” 

My stepmother looked — petrified I cannot say, 
since the word represented rather her usual man- 
ner — she looked as if she were going back from a 
fossil to a living madrepore, cold and gelatinous. 
Could I have said anything so rustic, so vulgar, so 
presumptuous ? 

“ You have all but perverted your cousin Har- 
riet into a reformer,” he said. “ I am half afraid 
of her going into bread and water, or Quaker bon- 
nets, or starting off for the Indies, East or West. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 407 

She does not seem able by any means to make her- 
self as uncomfortable as she would like.” 

u Cousin Harriet to the Indies ? ” I said. “ Is 
she to be married % ” 

“ Quite the contrary,” he replied ; “ unless she 
can find some one poor enough to make her as un- 
comfortable as she would wish. Seriously, Bride, 
she is a dear, good girl, but just a little wild about 
the prisons and the slaves, and the missionaries, 
and everybody’s wrongs and rights. At last, you 
know, the Church of England has sent to the hea- 
then not only the money you so magnificently de- 
spise, but a man , a Senior Wrangler. Henry 
Marty n (one of our West-country men, by-the-by) 
has given up the best career in England to devote 
himself to the conversion of the Hindoos. At last 
we have sent one of our highest ; not a German, 
nor a shoemaker, nor a Separatist of any kind, but 
a first-class university man, and a sound English 
Churchman. But Harriet seems most inclined to 
the Moravians. I believe, if I would allow her, 
she would go to-morrow to teach slave children in' 
one of the Moravian settlements in Antigua.” 

A thought flashed on me, and with it a pang. 
Could it be that this was another cord being woven 
into the net which I was so afraid would at last 
sweep away Amice from me % 

The next day was Sunday. After the after- 
noon service Cousin Crichton asked which was 
Madam Glanvil. He had pleasant recollections of 
shooting over the covers of Court. He was anx 


408 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ious to see the lady of the manor ; the earliest state 
ceremonial he could remember being Madam Glan- 
vil’s triumphal entry, as a blooming bride, with 
the young Squire, into Abbot’s Weir, under arches 
of flowers, with the old bells clashing cannons, and 
ringing joyous peals ; the tenants and townsmen 
hurraing, and the boys, himself among the num- 
ber, indulged in an unlimited allowance of noise. 

He had no idea in what a hostile form he was 
now entering Madam Glanvil’s principality. The 
coach was at the church door before we had fin- 
ished our inspection of various old family monu- 
ments and tablets of our own. 

We came out at the old Lych gate just as the 
two black footmen were drawn up in the usual 
form to usher Madam Glanvil into the coach. 
But there was a variety in the ceremonial, to me 
terribly significant. Amice, instead of lingering 
behind, as usual, for a greeting from my father, 
was marshalled before her grandmother, who fol- 
lowed her without turning round for the imperial 
but friendly Jupiter nod with which she usually 
favored us. For a moment I caught sight of 
Amice’s face leaning eagerly forward, and looking 
very pale. In another moment, by a stormy flash 
from Madam Glanvil’s steel-grey eyes, I saw that 
her not seeing us was positive, not negative. Then 
the blind was drawn violently down, the footmen 
sprang up behind, and the horses pranced demon- 
stratively away. 

By this I knew that Madam Glanvil had heard 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


409 


of the abolition meeting, and that sentence had 
gone forth between us and Amice. 

66 1 thought Miss Glanvil was jour greatest 
friend, Bride ? ” Cousin Crichton said. 

u She was,” I almost gasped, my heart beating 
violently ; “ she is, she always will be.” 

He looked amused at the solemnity and terse- 
ness of my protest. 

“ Preoccupied to-day ? ” 

“ It is the abolition meeting,” my father inter- 
posed. 

“Ah, I remember. Her father was a West 
India planter. The young lady has slave property. 
I see.” 

“ Indeed, Cousin Crichton,” I said, “ you don’t 
see ! She is more fervent for abolition — for eman- 
cipation — than any one. We can ah talk. That 
is easy enough. But she suffers .” 

“ The old lady does not approve ? ” 

“ Approve ! ” I said. That mild phrase applied 
to Madam Glanvil ’s sentiments, indicated the depth 
of Cousin Crichton’s want of comprehension. “ She 
is furious, mad, against it, against missionaries, 
against philanthropy, against Clapham, against 
everyone and everything that dares touch on the 
subject.” 

“ Ah ! ” said genial Cousin Crichton, “ very un- 
pleasant for the poor girl ! But not even fathers or 
mothers, much less grandmothers, must stand in 
the way. It is written, we all know, 4 Cut off the 
right hand,’ 4 Pluck out the right eye.’ ” 


410 


AGAUSST TEE STREAM. 


u Unpleasant ! ” yes I should think it would be 
unpleasant for Amice ! In the bitterness of my 
heart I said to myself that unpleasantness was the 
sharpest form of martyrdom Clapliam knew, or 
chose to know in its own person. The plucking 
out of the right eye, being so rich, it naturally paid 
to have done by proxy — by Germans, Methodists, 
Baptist shoemakers. I was as unjust to prosperous 
Clapham as Madam Glanvil. Talking was so easy ; 
and yet to me the talking to-morrow evening would 
actually be cutting off the right hand. My only 
consolation was to go and sit with Loveday. She 
knew, at all events, something of what right hands 
and right eyes meant ; although for her, dear soul, 
the crushing and cutting had been done by an ir- 
resistible Hand, and had only been made her own 
act by acquiescence. 

She was resting on the long cushioned window- 
seat, beside her a little table with a nosegay of flow- 
ers from the conservatories at Court. Amice sent 
one, or when she could, brought it, every Saturday. 

She had brought that yesterday. 

That little trifling token of kindness melted me 
out of my lofty heroics. I burst into tears, and 
pointing to the flowers said, — 

“ Oh, Loveday ! It is the last ! She will never 
bring them again.” 

Loveday started. 

“ Amice ill ?” she said. u What has happened % 
My dear, I am afraid my deafness increases, I am 
so stupid. I must have heard wrong.” 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


411 


“ No/’ I sobbed. “ The meeting ; the meeting 
to-morrow ! She was not allowed to speak to ns 
to-day.” 

Loveday leant back. Her lips quivered a little, 
but instead of tears came that smile of hers which 
was like music. 

“It is- beginning, dear child,” she said. “At 
last it is beginning /’’ taking my hand. “ You 
know it must have come. And she is ready. It 
has not come before she was quite ready.” 

“ But I am not ready ! ” I said. 

“No; naturally. We never are ready for our 
dearest to suffer. Therefore the cup is not in our 
hands.” 

“ But not to stand by her ! Not to be able to 
help her in the least ! ” 

“ You can help her, Bride. You know how. 
And the bitter cup itself will help her more. It is 
good, Bride, it is God’s best to give us to drink 
ever so little of the cup He drank of ; the cup itseli 
strengthens, Bride,” she said, with the conviction 
of one who has tasted. “ After so many thousand 
years, do you think the Master does not know how 
to mix the bitter herbs ? ” 

The Anti-Slave-Trade Meeting was not impres- 
sive as to quality or quantity, “ rank or fashion ; ” 
no chariots as at Freemasons’ Hall, no titles, cleri- 
cal or lay. 

We had one clergyman, a young man recently 
appointed to one of the parishes bordering on the 


412 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Moor. Shy, he looked, and gentle, and rather 
overwhelmed by the prominence that had to be 
given to him. We had our one physician, and 
much to Dr. Kenton’s credit it was that he came, 
running counter by that act to the prejudices of 
Miss Felicity and of his patroness Madam Glanvil. 
Madam Glanvil, indeed, had never been known to 
be in need of a physician. But in attending this 
evening Dr. Kenton must have counted the cost 
to science and to himself, and must have known 
that whatever happened in the future, he aban- 
doned the inmates of Court to being systemat- 
ically “ lowered ” into the grave. 

There were several small tradesmen attending 
at some risk of loss ; there was one Methodist far- 
mer, brought by John Wesley’s “Thoughts on 
Slavery ; ” there were numbers of mechanics and 
laborers, many of them from our foundry and tim- 
ber-yard; and there were all our Sunday-school 
children — the boys very impressive in stamping 
applause, when they understood it was allowed. 

My father took the chair. The forms of “ mov- 
ing and seconding ” seemed like parodies in that 
confidential little gathering. But Cousin Crichton 
was rigid in his adherence to them. 

It seemed scarcely worth while to have sum- 
moned Cousin Crichton from London, and to have 
severed such ties, just to spread a little informa- 
tion among a few people, all of whom we knew, 
and to whom we could say so much more in confi- 
dence any day ! 


AGAINST THE STREAM . 


413 


At least my cowardly heart said so. 

But might not the same be said of all symbols ? 
Was there not a moment in life when two people 
clasping hands before a few others meant union 
for life and death ? Were not nearly all the test- 
ing acts of life from the first, recorded, in them- 
selves mere trifles, such as the plucking of one 
fruit? 

Had there not been a moment when the future 
of the world depended on a hundred and twenty 
men and women, most of them poor and unlettered, 
meeting together in an upper cjiamber to confess 
that they believed One to be alive who was said 
to be dead, and waited for some gift He had 
promised ? 

Poor little meeting in the Abbot’s Weir mar- 
ket-room ! It meant something, perhaps, even 
above. It symbolized enough indeed to me. 

But just as my father was beginninghis speech 
one figure quietly entered, and remained just in- 
side the door, whose arrival took away all doubt 
as to the significance of the symbol to me. 

Veiled and cloaked as the figure was, I knew 
it at once. It was Amice Grlanvil. 

My father recognized her also. I knew by the 
little tremulousness in his voice. 

An officious porter would have placed for her 
a chair of honor, but my father motioned him to 
be quiet. 

She did not remain cloaked. As the speeches 
went on, she threw aside her cloak, and her hood 


414 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


fell back unconsciously as she leant forward, listen- 
ing, quite calm, and apparently seeing no one, but 
with a steady fire in her eyes. 

I trembled, now, lest Cousin Crichton should 
say any severe undiscriminating things against the 
planters, as if they were all Heros, which she 
could not bear to hear. 

But severity was not his weakness ; and the 
audience was not impassioned enough to sweep an 
orator on into any wild statements. 

Cousin Crichton began with praising every- 
body whom he could praise. And then a new and 
paralyzing fear came over me that he would round 
off a period with “ heroic women forsaking their 
parents, and cutting off* right hands.” But hap- 
pily either the bad light of our tallow candles 
saved him from the discovery, or his better genius 
interposed. 

He much commended the shy young clergy- 
man. 

Conservative as he was, true to Church and 
King, Lords and Commons, and all the detail of 
our inimitable constitution, he confessed he re- 
gretted that in this instance the Upper House had 
scarcely taken the lead in good works as might 
have been hoped. The Bill for the abolition of 
the abominable trade had once passed the Com- 
mons, but never yet the Lords. We were told in- 
deed that “ not many noble ” (in my presence he 
did not venture on the “ not many rich ”). “ But 

he rejoiced to tell them — if they did not already 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


415 


know — that among those doubly ennobled by be- 
ing first in this noble cause were their own Earl 
and Countess of Abbot’s Weir ; and that one at 
least of the royal dukes, the Duke of Gloucester, 
was with us. (Prolonged cheers.) 

u He would have been glad also, loyal as any 
man in England to his Church, if her ministers, 
or, at a U events, her bishops, had led their flocks 
in this crusade. But the bishops, as a body, had 
not yet taken this position. Two of their number, 
however, were firm supporters — Bishop Porteus, 
of London, and Bishop Horsley, of St. Asaph’s. 
The exceptional names deserved mention, much as 
one regretted their being exceptional.’’ 

Then, with a tribute to the young clergyman 
present, to John Wesley, to the Quakers, and to 
my father, each of which brought its meed of 
cheering, and gradually warmed the audience into 
a readiness to receive the facts he had to relate, he 
began the serious portion of his speech. 

First of all the decrease instead of increase of 
the slave population through cruelty and toil, 
which was the originating cause of the Trade ; the 
inciting of the natives of Africa to war, the kid- 
napping and packing in the hold of the ship, illus- 
trated by a large copy of Mr. Clarkson’s dreadful 
diagram ; the statistics of death on the voyage. 
Thus, in a calm, English, business-like way, he 
went over the whole terribly familiar ground. 

He would not dwell on isolated. instances of ex- 
cess or of cruelty. There was isolated excess in a 


416 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


thousand directions, among our parish apprentices, 
among our seamen. It was the cruelty involved 
in the mildest form under the mildest task-master, 
owner or overseer, the cruelty inevitable in the 
traffic, on which he insisted. Unless the toil and 
the punishments in the plantations were such as to 
crush a race, a tropical race, it must be remembered, 
working in a climate congenial to them, the popu- 
lation would not have to be recruited from Africa, 
and the trade would not be needed. Unless a system 
of savage warfare, secret attacks, burning villages, 
kidnapping, and wrongs unutterable, were encour- 
aged in Africa, the trade would not be possible. 

Then he went into the history of the struggle, 
giving their due to John Woolman, Antony Bena- 
zet, Leonhard Dober, the Moravians and Wesley- 
ans, and the American Quakers, and alluding to 
the labors of Granville Sharpe, Clarkson, and to the 
championship of Mr. Wilberforce, he concluded 
with a contrast between the professions of liberty, 
equality, and fraternity in France which had ended 
in this invasion of San Domingo and the imprison- 
ment of Toussaint, the greatest negro, in the dun- 
geon on the Jura — and the freedom based on a re- 
ligion and a Constitution like our own ; between 
the noisy explosion of revolution ending in despot- 
ism to the white, and slavery for the black, and the 
great patient struggle against wrong, carried on 
now from the Houses of Parliament to every corner 
of our country, and before long, as he believed, to 
end triumphantly; or, rather, as he dared to hope, 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 41 7 

to begin a fresh era of conflict and victory, by the 
abolition of the slave trade. 

And all the time I was listening, not in my own 
person, but in that of Amice Grlanvil. 

When Cousin Crichton closed, I ventured to 
steal another look at her face. It was full of a 
great joy, although I could see it was wet with 
tears. 

The young clergyman pronounced a benedic- 
tion. We sang the Doxology ; and then the meet- 
ing broke up. 

Amice caught my eye, and I rose instinctive- 
ly to move towards her. But she looked very 
grave, shook her head, motioned me away, and ip. 
another moment, with her rapid movements, had 
cloaked herself, and disappeared from the room. 

I was anxious how she would get home. But 
before I could say so, Piers had disappeared, and 
did not return among us until he had watched her 
safely inside the gate. 

At the gate she turned and shook hands with 
him ; but she said nothing. 

And as Piers came back he met Reuben Pen- 
gelly on the same errand. 

“Poor lamb!” said Reuben. “We say the 
words, but she has to carry the wood for the sacri- 
fice.” 

I felt sure I understood what she meant. She 
would resist her grandmother’s will for what she 
deemed a duty, a confession of the right. But she 


27 


418 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


would not by that means win for herself one mo- 
ment of pleasant intercourse with us. 

When should I know what or how she had suf- 
fered ? Loveday said we did know how she en- 
dured, and that was much. 

I knew sooner than I expected. 

The next morning a letter came from Amice, 
saying, “ I have told Granny I mean to see you, 
and to wish you good-bye. Come this afternoon 
to the old hollow trunk that hangs over the violet 
bank, by the river, just inside the gate. It is be- 
gun , Bride. I feel that my work, the work for 
me, has begun. And it will not be left un- 
finished.” 

When I came to the old trunk we had sat on 
so often, she was there. She took my hands and 
kissed them. I would have thrown my arms 
around her, but she would not have it. 

“ lam one of them, Bride,” she said, “ not by 
any condescension or sympathy, but really, liter- 
ally, by birthright. Granny says my mother, my 
father’s wife, was a slave. Therefore I have a 
right to care for them. You see I am scarcely 
myself free-born.” 

And as she said so her eyes kindled, her form 
rose into such a majesty, and her face so shone 
with the feeling and purpose of the soul, as to give 
one some conception of what might be meant by 
a “ spiritual body.” Free-born indeed she was ; 
free-born in the old Teutonic sense, ever} 7 inch and 
every thought of her free , that is, noble ; posses- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


419 


sor of herself and of who could say what besides, 
free and royal as the heir of a hundred generations 
of royalty. 

“ Granny would never have told me,” she said, 
“unless she had been beside herself with anger. 
And I believe she would give much to have the 
words unsaid. It happened in this way. It was 
on Sunday afternoon, as we drove to church. On 
a bit of old wall fronting the gate was one of the 
advertisements, and in the large letters, ‘ Anti- 
Slavery Meeting , Monday evening ,’ and £ Piers 
Panes combe in the chair? She was there in the 
morning, but she had not seen it. Instantly she 
leant out of the window and stopped the carriage. 

“ Cato and Caesar came to the window looking 
very conscious and sheepish. 

“ £ Tear down that,’ she said. 

“ She was too angry for epithets. 

“ The poor fellows tore the paper into shreds. 

“ ‘ Take up the shreds,’ said she, ‘ and carry 
them to Mr. Danescombe’s counting-house to-mor- 
row with my compliments, and tell him I shall 
prosecute with the utmost rigor of the law who- 
ever dared to fix that vile trash on my walls. Now 
drive on.’ 

“ Cato trembled, but I caught sight of a grin 
on Caesar’s face as he retired. 

“ ‘ Now,’ she said, turning to me, 6 when did you 
know of this ? ’ 

“ £ Some weeks since,’ I said. 

“ ‘ And that little silky creature from the town 


420 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


too,’ said she. 4 Fool that I was to expect more 
from your mother's child' 

44 And in that frame of mind we entered the 
church. 

44 How we left it you know. 

44 As for me, I could not help being more than 
half on her side. How could it look to her, but 
as a long course of concealment ? How could 
she understand all the reasons which made us 
feel it hopeless to tell her beforehand ? her deaf- 
ness, her imperiousness, the hopelessness of argu- 
ing with her, the impossibility of abandoning 
what we considered right. 

‘ 4 Before the evening I should have made a 
determined effort, and told her all I felt, cost her 
and me what it might ; and it might have ended, 
after a storm, in our understanding each other 
better than before. 

44 But for those words, 4 your mother's child ! ' 
I think she would have withdrawn them if she 
could, and have concentrated her anger on you 
and your father. But she could not tear the 
words out of my heart ; nor could I suffer all she 
said of you. % 

44 1 need not tell you that, Bride ; it would 
be ungenerous and unjust. Ydu know her; and 
how much, and how little, such words mean. 5 ’ 

I knew, indeed, that Madam Glanvil did deal 
largely in superlatives, although not at all in the 
style of the superlatives of Clapham. 

44 However, she roused me beyond endurance. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


421 


I defended you — I could not help it — and said a 
thousand vehement things, which, of course, had 
a doubly vehement effect, shouted close to her 
ear. It is so difficult, under the calmest circum- 
stances, to discuss anything with a deaf person 
without seeming in a passion. 

“ I said you and your father were the very 
soul of truth and honor. 

“ Then she turned on me and said again — 

“ ‘ She had been a fool to expose me to low 
hypocritical influences, but that no influence would 
ever have persuaded a true Glanvil to do what I 
had done. What could the child of a slave know 
of honor ? ’ 

“ As usual, her own passionate words, once ut- 
tered, cooled her. 

“ She became reasonable, and would have soft- 
ened them. 

“ i I mean no insult to your mother or your 
poor father,” she said. ‘ She was a faithful wife 
and a good woman, they say, and her birth was 
not her own fault, however her beauty may have 
been his ruin. The misfortune was his, the fault 
was his, or her Spanish forefathers’, at whose door 
it lies that these beautiful half-castes exist. I am 
sorry I said anything.’ (She was actually apolo- 
gizing to me for my birth.) £ Forget it, child. 
We will both forget and forgive. But never talk 
to me, and never expect me to tolerate one of that 
Danescombe set again.’ 

“ And she did say very bitter and untrue things ; 


422 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


more than I felt I ought to bear. I was perfectly 
calm then. And when I am quite calm I can al- 
ways make Granny hear without shouting. I 
spoke quite slowly, so that she must hear, and I 
could see that she heard — 

“ First of all, naturally, I defended you ; and 
then I said, ‘ Granny, I thank you more than I can 
say for what you have told me. For now my duty 
is clear. If my mother was a slave, the slaves are 
her kindred, and mine. I have a duty to her race 
and mine, not only because they are men and 
women — because God made them and our Lord 
redeemed them — but because they are my moth- 
er’s people. And in one way or another, I will 
devote myself, body, soul, and substance, to help- 
ing and serving them in every way I can, as long 
as I live . 5 

“ She did not storm any more, poor Granny. 
She looked actually bewildered and frightened, 
and began to contradict herself. 

“ ‘Your mother was not exactly a slave , 5 she 
said, ‘when my poor George married her. She 
had been, as an infant ; but her parents were set 
free in San Domingo. They were more than half 
Spaniards ; Mustees , I think they • were called in 
our islands. Three parts white or more. They 
were free, and living on a plantation of their own, 
with this their only daughter, when your father 
saw her. 

“ ‘ Poor George ! I cannot blame him much 
though I did blame him bitterly, more than I 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


423 


snould, perhaps. I am a hot-tempered old woman, 
now at all events. She could not help her beauty, 
and no woman he loved could help loving him. 
Poor fellow ! I wrote to him again before she 
died, and sent some jewels for her ; and she sent 
me a pretty message, poor thing. And then she 
died, and he died, and there were none left but 
you and me. And you have been not so bad a 
child, or would not have been, but for those hypo- 
crites. So let us forget and forgive.’ 

u It was much harder, Bride, to oppose her 
gentle, and pleading tenderly, like that. 

“ I ventured to take her hand. It was rigid, 
but she let me keep it in both of mine. 

“ 6 Dear Granny, I can never forget, I must 
never forget. I will be your own child, if you 
will let me, as long as you live. But now, and 
always, next to you , I will, I must, I ought to care 
for my mother's people and my father’s servants, 
his slaves, and my kindred. My mother’s people 
must be mine.’ 

“ The little gleam of rare softness and tender- 
ness vanished. 

She snatched her hand from me and went up 
stairs. I took her candle as usual and followed 
her up to her bedroom. At the door she turned 
and said, with a concentration of suppressed pas- 
sion, ‘ You may sit at my table still, if you like, 
being your father’s child ; as long as 1 live , as you 
say. And then, if you please, you may go to your 
mother’s relations, to the King of Dahomey, to 


424 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


the Pope of Pome, or the Methodist madmen, or 
wherever you please. I daresay you will not have 
long to wait.’ 

“ And so,’’ Amice concluded, “I do sit at her 
table ; and neither of us speaks a word. Her heart 
— poor dear Granny — burning with wounded love 
and pride, and a sense of bitter ingratitude and 
wrong ; and mine overflowing with pity which I 
cannot utter or look ; with reverence for all the 
long reticence which my many provocations never 
made her break through during all these years; 
and with sympathy for what she must feel about 
my ‘ wilful folly and heartless ingratitude.’ Hever 
once to have suffered me to see a glimpse of a fact 
which she believed must have at any moment 
brought me down on my knees in abject humilia- 
tion and subjection ! And when she brought out 
this terrible, irresistible weapon, faithfully conceal- 
ed so long, to find it indeed terrible and irresistible, 
but altogether turned, as she must feel, against 
herself. The thing I am most sorry for as regards 
myself and you, Bride ! ” she resumed, “ is this ap 
pearance of concealment about the meeting. 1 
don’t think we could have done otherwise. But 
this made me more resolved to throw off all disguise, 
and come to the meeting myself. I thought over 
it all Sunday night, Bride. I hope it did not look 
like bravado, or any reflection on my father. You 
think I did right ? ” 

“ I am sure,” I said, “ it was not bravado ; it was 
confession ; and how are we to help confession 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


425 


looking like bravado sometimes to those who hate 
what we confess we believe ? ” 

“Yes,” she said. “And for those who are 
gone, whom we cannot see or consult any more, I 
always feel we must try to do, not what they would 
perhaps have wished when they saw in part, but 
what they would wish now that they see 4 face to 
face ; ’ that is, as far as we can find it out. And I 
think there is no doubt what would be wished in 
heaven as to not driving black men like brutes, or 
as to teaching slaves of Him who makes us all free.” 

“Ho doubt at all, I should think,” I replied, 
“ as to what is thought in heaven about the slave- 
trade.” 

“Ho,” she said ; “ so I came.” 

“ And now, Bride,” she said, “ good-bye. You 
may kiss me if you like, now you know I am the 
daughter of a slave.” 

“But why good-bye, Amice?” I said. “You 
told Madam Grlanvil ; — and now you are fairly in 
opposition ! ” 

“ For shame, Bride ! ” she said. “ I shall begin 
to think ‘ Methodism,’ as Granny calls it, does lead 
to insurrection, as she says. I belong to the 
Church of England, and believe in the Catechism ; 
and if I have any leaning to any other form of 
Christianity it is to the Moravians, who are the 
most conservative and submissive people upon 
earth. In my great aunt Prothesea’s hymn-book, 
there are whole sections of hymns on the stillness 
and resignation of the heart, on patience in inward 


426 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


and outward tribulation, on poverty and lowliness 
of spirit. Do you know, Bride,” she said, with 
one of her brightest sudden smiles, “ I really feel 
in some way nearer Granny now, and love her bet- 
ter than before. I am not sure sometimes that I 
do not really love her more than I love you or any 
one, as I ought perhaps always to have done, and 
never could do. I am so sorry for her. In every 
possible thing, Bride, I will submit to Granny, as 
far as possible ; and in this thing, which costs me 
more than anything, most of all. I have told 
Granny that you and Mr. Danescombe, and Piers, 
are noble as Norman conquerors and crusaders, and 
saints and angels, of better blood than the Glanvils, 
and ten times better Christians than any of us. 
And I have also told her that until she sanctions 
it, I will not see one of you again.” 

There was no moving her. She had “ begun ” 
indeed, as Loveday had said. We neither of us 
said “good-bye.” 

We just gave each other one long kiss, and 
turned and went home our different ways. 

So, as it seemed to me, the sun was blotted out 
of my life, and Amice’s warfare began. 




CHAPTER XXYIII. 

OUSEST CRICHTOH went away in a 
state of radiant satisfaction. 

“ Who said the tone of Christianity 
in these days was lowered ? Who said 
people were not ready to cut off the right hand, 
to go to the rack, the block, the stake, if duty de- 
manded ? ” His sense of “ solidarity ” in such 
matters was keen, although the word was yet un- 
born. He felt, I am sure, as if he had cut off his 
own right hand, metaphorically. That is, he felt 
the virtuous satisfaction, and rejoiced in us who 
had to bear the pain. For Court was closed to 
us, as absolutely as any Bastile. 

Of all our circle only Cousin Dick Fyford 
and the vicar continued to enter those dear old 
gates between the savage heraldic griffins. 

And Dick’s reports were anything but cheer- 
ful or cheering. I began almost to believe he 
had really fallen in love as I had “ fallen in 
friendship ” so long ago, deeply, hopelessly, and 
forever. 

“ The gates of Court were like the gates of 



428 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Dante’s hell,” he said. (He had been cultivating 
poetry of the severest and gloomiest kind. Byron 
was not yet available — had not yet written his sa- 
tire on “ English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” 
Despairing young persons had therefore to draw 
from deeper sources, and Dick had found a trans- 
lation of Dante in Uncle Fyford’s library con- 
genial.) 

“ Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” 

“ Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate,” 

was, he considered, breathing out of the savage 
month of those heraldic griffins, written like an- 
cient Hebrew words on the posts of the doors, 
furrowed on the faces, black and white, of domes- 
tic and host. Only to find a similitude for Amice 
had he to rise to another book of the Divine 
Comedy. 

She was radiant, angelic — more than angelic — 
tender and good as a dear child, beneficent, gra- 
cious, imperial, and, alas ! far off as the Madonna 
Beatrice. 

Madam Glanvil never spoke to her. U or could 
it be said Madam Glanvil spoke graciously to any 
one. She seemed, he said, in a kind of way, defy- 
ing the world to come nearer to her than the child 
she was thus rigidly keeping from her. 

“ Very strange,” said Dick ; “ it seems as if 
those two really loved each other better than be- 
fore.” 

I remembered Amice’s words. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


429 


I thought it was very probably true. Madam 
Glanvil’s speech was at no time exactly concili- 
atory, or calculated to promote tender feeling. 

Perhaps the two were going through a u dis- 
cipline of silence,” as Claire suggested, and it was 
doing them both good. 

But then, for a moment, came a little foolish 
pang, whether it could be possible that Amice was 
really not only outwardly but inwardly submitting 
to her grandmother’s will, and making a sacrifice 
of me in her heart. She was not a woman to do 
things by halves. And if her conscience did get 
the upper hand of her good sense, it might possess 
her like a demon, and lead her to do anything, 
everything that was hard and dreadful and ago- 
nizing to herself. It is just of such strong, true, 
passionate, steadfast natures martyrs are made ; 
of such natures, a little twisted, anchorets, faqueers, 
Simon Stylites. 

And I, feebler, smaller, with less range, less 
tone, like a harpsichord to an organ, like my step- 
mother’s spinet to the organ in Westminster Ab- 
bey, as I was beside Amice ; yet she had always 
called me her “ good- in-every thing,” her “ good 
genius of common sense.” And I was not near 
to plead for myself or for her. And Dick said she 
never mentioned me, never asked for any of us 
never alluded to us. 

Did it mean that she was really giving me up ; 
or did it only mean she trusted without the shadow 


430 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


of a fear that I would always trust her without the 
shadow of a doubt ? 

Yes, it meant that. In all my sane moments 
I was sure it meant that. 

Loveday never had the least doubt it meant 
that. 

Nor had she the least shadow of a doubt who 
would conquer in that contest between Amice and 
her grandmother. “ Love is stronger than Death,” 
she said, “ and than all the shadows of death. 
After all, death, that is, hatred, pride, selfishness 
has only shadows for its weapons, and can only 
conquer shadows. And Amice’s love and truth and 
faith are no shadows. She will overcome sooner 
or later : she will conquer evil by good. And I 
think it will be soon.” 

It did not seem soon to me. And the evil 
thing which severed Amice and me seemed to 
me at all events a very substantial negation, as 
substantial as the negation of a rock to a ship 
breaking to pieces on it. 

It was a time of negations and partings. 

At last, Piers, was able to fulfil his desire of 
paying a visit to France. 

He had no need to gather fresh details as to the 
situation of the chateau where Claire had passed 
her childhood. That I knew, was what the jour- 
ney to France chiefly signified to him : but even 
I never said so, even to him. And to any one else 
it seemed the most natural thing in the world that 
any young Englishman, who was able, should take 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


431 


advantage of the closing of the war gates, to enter 
the land those open gates had closed to us so long, 
and might close again so soon. 

Madam Glanvil was the only person who look- 
ed censoriously on the expedition. And that she 
did so, was only implied in an observation Dick 
heard her make to Uncle Fyford. 

“ The First Consul is doing one good work, at 
all events,” she said. “ He is converting the Whigs. 
I understand, he says he could buy all the French 
Republicans with a little money and gold-lace. 
He seems to buy ours without any such expenditure. 
Charles Fox was hand and glove with him, I un- 
derstand, in Paris. No wonder if the small fry 
follow.” 

“ You will pay homage, my friend,” said 
Madame des Ormes, when Piers came to her room 
to take leave, “ to Madame, or Son Altesse the First 
Consuless, or whatever they call her, the Creole 
wife of the Corsican. They say she has a fine 
Court at the Tuileries, and dresses well. They 
have set up the opera again. Scarcely necessary, 
I should have thought. That new theatre at the 
Tuileries must be more attractive. And Italians 
and Creoles have talents for the drama, frequently. 
Of the older noblesse you will find more in Eng- 
land — I had almost said at Abbot’s Weir — than at 
Paris. The corps dramatique is complete now, I 
hear. They have a Church as well as a Court ; 
priests who take the oath to violate the confessional 
if the government demands information about 


432 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


what it is pleased to call a Plot ; bishops appointed 
by the Corsican, and all paid by him. It is quite 
complete, and all absolutely in the Manager’s 
hands.” 

“Mamma, ” said Claire coloring, “ he said he 
would inquire about our dear old cure at Les 
Ormes. Ad all events he has not taken that oath.” 

“ Ho, indeed ; many of the old priests are 
in prison. God bless them,” replied Madame. 
“ See, my children,” she added, “ I grow bitter ! 
Do not the books of piety tell us that all earthly 
glory is tinsel, all courts but a stage ? Only some 
tinsel is in better taste. There is gilt paper and 
ormolu. And to us, children of time that we are, a 
thousand years will seem longer than yesterday.” 

“ Mamma,” said Claire in a whisper, “ It has 
done one good work, that new government. It 
has abolished the festival for the guillotining of 
our king.” 

“ That is always something,” Madame con- 
ceded. “ And the Fast for the Day of his Mar- 
tyrdom, the prayers, and the weeping, no power 
in France or out of it can abolish.” 

“ And,” suggested sanguine Claire, “ they have 
abolished the Decade, and restored the Week, and 
the Sunday, and opened the churches.” 

u Condescending certainly to old-fashioned 
people, to let them say September and Sunday, 
once more,” Madame admitted. 

“ There is nothing you can give me to do, 
Madame ? ’’ said Piers. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


433 


“My friend,” she replied, “ my living are here. 
My dead only are there. Would you have me 
send you on a pilgrimage to the tombs and ruins ? 
I can not even guide you to those ! Our people 
are industrious. They will not let even the stones 
of our ruined chateaux be wasted. They will 
have built useful little bourgeois houses with them. 
But the King, the Queen, Madame Elizabeth — who 
will tell you even where they sleep, that you 
might weep for them ? My dead in France have 
no tombs. It is not until the third or fourth 
generation that men build the sepulchres of the 
prophets.” 

“ Mamma,” pleaded Claire, “ there is M. le Cure 
who instructed me for my first communion. He 
was so good, and all the people loved him. And 
there were many who would like to hear of us, of 
you, if Mr. Piers were near Les Ormes, any day.” 

“ Ma cherie , Les Ormes is near nothing except 
Port Royal des Champs. Th&re are tombs at all 
events, although trampled on and in ruins.” 

“Madame,” said Piers, glancing at Claire, “ I 
will certainly make a pilgrimage to Port Royal des 
Champs.” 

“ Strange that I have not an introduction to of- 
fer you,” she said. “ It was not so ten years ago. 
Stay, I will write a little letter for our poor cure.” 

“ Mamma,” murmured Claire. “My uncle, the 
l’Abbe, says the First Consul has a strong secret 
police, and at the head of it a terrible M. Fouche, 


28 


434 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


who was a Jacobin. If compromising letters were 
found — ■” 

“ True,” replied Madame. “ Take this,” she 
said ; and opening a little cachette, she took out a 
signet ring and placed it on his finger. 

“ This is our family devise ,” she said. “ M. le 
Cure will recognize its bearer as a friend, and will 
tell you anything he can. Or any of our old ser- 
vants. But what dreams am I indulging ? Who 
knows where the cure is, or the church '( And our 
old servants may have been made conscripts and 
killed long ago ; or republicans, and may denounce 
you; or proprietors, and not too anxious for news 
to disturb their possessions ; or they may have been 
massacred, or noyaded as faithful men and women. 
Take care, my friend, how you use that token. 
But keep it always, if you will, as a memorial of the 
old days of our race, and of all the chivalrous kind- 
ness of you and yours to an old French citoyenne. 
It is not a bad motto,” she concluded — “ ‘Foi, roi , 
loij in a circle — so no one can say which comes 
first. Make it Divine, my friend, and then certain- 
ly it matters little where the circle begins.” 

He kissed her hand, as we had been used to do 
from childhood, grasped Claire’s for an instant, and 
went away. 

He was to start the next evening. 

It was his birthday, in January, the month 
which had once given and taken away so much, in 
our home. 

I went up to his room to help him pack, or 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


435 


rather to talk while he was packing. He was al- 
ways independent of feminine aid in that matter. 
But carefully as I had looked over everything, 
there might yet be some stray button or string to 
sew on. 

We talked very fast. He was in high spirits. 

Once more it was a beginning for him, and felt 
like an ending for me. 

“ It is very unreasonable,” he said, as he gave a 
last impressive stamp to his carpet-bag, “ to feel as 
if I were going to do something important. It is 
scarcely farther to the French coast in time, than 
to Clapham, scarcely as far, if the wind is fair.” 

“Ho,” I said. “We have heard enough of 
that lately from Dick. He says the French say 
they could be in London in a few hours, from Bou- 
logne. And he would greatly like to be under Hei- 
son’s command and to see them try.” 

“ I hope they will wait till I come back, and 
have accomplished my mission, whatever it is,” he 
said. 

“ Do you remember years and years and years 
ago,” I said, “when you were a little boy, and 
when first we met Claire, and when Claire kissed 
me with the fool’s cap on, and you said ‘ it would 
be worth while to do something like that for her ,’ 
and I said, ‘ there was nothing to be done and 
you said something always came to be done when 
it was the right time.” 

“ Bride,” he said, stooping over the portmanteau 
and energetically snapping the lock, “ Your gram 


436 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


mar is getting very confused. Unhappily you 
never went to Mr. Rabbidge’s and learnt about 
aorists and imperfects, and narrative tenses. Some- 
thing has never come, you see. And to go to 
France to look for it does seem what Uncle Fyford 
would call Utopian and Mr. Rabbidge chimerical.” 

“ Yet you are going,” I said. 

“It would be something to find there was 
nothing to be done,” he answered. “ To find, 
that is to say, that France can do nothing for her ; 
and, so, that there may indeed be something for us 
to do for her.” 

And so the next morning, to Madam Glanvil’s 
indignation, to Madame des Ormes’s perplexity, 
and a little to Claire’s, but full of purpose and hope, 
which, as usual with him, came out but little in 
words, in the crisp January frost, he went off across 
the moors to the sea. 




CHAPTER XXIX. 

HIJS Piers went out, it seemed to me, 
into the bracing air, and the morning 
sunshine, and I turned back to the dusk 
and the chill. 

Such a dimness and chill fell on everything 
when he was gone ! Such fears came for him, for 
England, for the slaves, for Amice, for our little 
Sunday-school, for everything ! And indeed those 
winter days early in 1803 were dark months for 
England; and for Abbot’s Weir; chill and chaotic 
— full of uncertainties and indecisions for us all. 

In February England was thrilled to her remot- 
est bounds by one of those great common impul- 
ses which now and then prove the living unity of 
national existence, and in proving quicken and 
raise the national life. 

The trial of Peltier was going on in the Court 
of Queen’s Bench. The prosecutor, our Attorney- 
general, on behalf of Napoleon Bonaparte ; the 
defendant, an obscure Royalist emigre ; the accusa- 
tion, libel against a friendly government ; the advo- 
cate, Sir James Mackintosh. In reality England 



438 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


felt, and millions in silenced Europe felt it was Lib- 
erty that was on her trial in her last asylum ; the 
accuser, Despotism embodied in the First Consul ; 
the advocate the last country in the world in which 
the press remained free. 

Mackintosh’s eloquent words vibrated through- 
out the land. England was quite capable of being 
simultaneously electrified to her remotest towns, 
and villages, and homesteads, before the electric 
telegraph came into being; simultaneously for all 
working purposes. 

We make too much, I think, sometimes of these 
material inventions. Eager groups awaited the 
little badly-printed reports of the trial, and news 
from the passengers, at every inn-door, as the lum- 
bering coaches passed through. Slow communi- 
cations, clumsy reports ; yet the heart of the old 
country beat warm and fast enough. 

“ Mackintosh called on his countrymen to 
“ pause before the earthquake swallowed up the 
last refuge of liberty. Switzerland and Holland 
once had a free press. Switzerland and Holland 
(two of Bonaparte’s miserable bagatelles) existed 
no more. Since the prosecutions had begun, fifty 
old imperial free German cities had vanished. 
When vast projects of aggrandizement are manifest- 
ed,” he said, “ when schemes of criminal ambition 
are carried into effect, the day of battle is fast ap- 
proaching for England. Her free press can only 
fall under the ruins of the British Empire. Her 
free government cannot engage in dangerous wars 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


439 


without the free and hearty support of her people. 
A king of England who, in such circumstances, 
should conspire against the free press of the coun- 
try would silence the trumpet which is to call his 
people around his standard.” 

The verdict was given by the reluctant jury as 
a matter of law, against Peltier. But the defence 
was translated into every European language (into 
French by Madame de Stael) ; and the challenge 
of England was virtually thrown down to Napo- 
leon. 

For in those months England was “ drifting ” 
into war, alone, without one nation in the world 
to stand by her, and without a hand she trusted at 
the helm. 

Rumors reached us of insults offered to our 
Ambassador, Lord Whitworth, at the Court — they 
began to call it a Court — of the First Consul ; 
insults borne by England with the kind of easy 
patience of large creatures, which so often misleads 
other creatures to provoke that large and careless 
tolerance beyond its limits. Remonstrance against 
Bonaparte’s aggressions, met with a contemptuous 
sarcasm, in reference to our refusal to yield Malta, 
by angry taunts of “ perfidious breach of treaties ” 
and threats of the consequences, launched in full 
saloon at Lord Whitworth ; until, at length, the 
“ nation of shopkeepers,” as the First Consul called 
it, was roused to that total disregard of profit and 
loss, that fearless daring of all consequences which 
however frequently repeated in “ our island-story,” 


440 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


seems always to take the rest of the European 
world by surprise. 

War was declared, or rather accepted. Two 
French privateers were captured. And in one of 
the dramatic rages with which he cowed the rest 
of the world, the First Consul, in revenge, seized 
ten thousand British subjects, who happened to be 
peacefully travelling in France ; the ten thousand 
“ detenus ,” who throughout the campaigns of 
Nelson and Wellington had to linger out the 
weary years in French prisons, or at least, in a 
society which to them was all one prison. 

And among them was our own Piers. 

We refused to believe it for a long time. 
Piers, we said to each other, could speak French 
so well, he was sure to escape whSn others would 
be detected. But then, acting, or any kind of strat- 
agem or disguise were so foreign to his nature ; 
and his whole bearing was “ so English, ” Claire 
said despondingly, though far from disparagingly. 
But then, she added, there were sure to be kind 
souls ready to help a stranger in France; had 
not they found it so in England ? and would her 
compatriots be outdone ? She was sure there must 
he fathers and mothers and sisters in France who 
would feel how Piers would he missed, and would 
help him to return to us. 

In March I had received a letter from Piers, 
quite long for him. He had made his way to two 
of the Marquise’s former estates. He had looked 
for the cure, hut in vain. One hundred and fifty 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


441 


priests were in prison in the diocese of Paris, for 
refusing to take the oaths required by the govern- 
ment. “ And yet,” wrote Piers, u his Highness 
has placed the bust of Brutus in the Tuileries, to 
convince every one that liberty is as dear to him 
and to France as ever.” 

He did not hnd the peasants miserable. Mr. 
Arthur Young had said before the Revolution that 
more than half of the land of France already be- 
longed to the peasants, only burdened by compul- 
sory service (in making and repairing roads, for 
instance,) and by other oppressive burdens. The 
Revolution abolished the burdens. Piers supposed 
it was so on this estate of Madame’s. Her peas- 
ants affectionately remembered the Seigneur’s fam- 
ily, spoke most cordially of them, asked for Mad- 
ame and the little Demoiselle ; but did not exactly 
wish to have the burdens re-imposed. The De- 
partment now made the roads and paid for having 
them made. And they had more to eat and drink, 
and better clothes to wear; at least they would 
have, were it not for the war and the conscription. 
They wished England would be tranquil, and the 
Emigres nobles would not excite her to combat, as 
it was reported they did. Then Madame might 
come back to live among them, — if not exactly as 
before — the chateau had unfortunately been burnt 
— yet to such wealth as was compatible with a 
republic. 

Another of the Des Ormes estates had been 
purchased by the former Intendant for a nominal 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


442 

sum, and he and his aged wife listened with tear- 
ful interest to all Piers could relate of Madame and 
Claire. The old man regarded himself as only 
manager of the property, as of old, and looked for- 
ward to restore it one day to Madame. But he en- 
treated that she would come back without delay. 
For, he privately told Piers, “ he had a great neph- 
ew, his heir, brought up in the atmosphere of the 
new regime if regime it could be called, and he 
could not be sure of his loyalty to any one or any- 
thing. He was a fine young man, however, and 
his mother a lady of the fallen noblesse — the pe- 
tite noblesse certainly, not such a house as the 
Des Ormes. But he had sometimes thought 
whether an alliance might be possible ? ’’ Piers had 
seen the great nephew privately, and thought him 
an intolerable dandy and upstart. He could scarce- 
ly bear to write the words of the Intendant, but 
the old man had insisted, and as an envoy he thought 
himself bound to yield. In a fortnight, or less now, 
he hoped himself to be with us again. 

He wished to say something cheering to Mad- 
ame. But it was difficult. I must judge how 
much to mention to her. Ten years was a Ions: 
time anywhere. In ten years babies grew into 
youths, children into men, young men into 
thrifty fathers of families. It was a very long pe- 
riod in a country which could not count ten years 
from its new era, in which an institution which 
had lasted a twelvemonth seemed almost antique. 
To come back to old England he felt would be 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


443 


like stepping from a raft, just lashed together out 
of broken pieces of the ship, to terra firma. He 
only trusted Madame might feel the same. Eng- 
land was perhaps a rocky, chill, cheerless region 
compared with her sunny France. But it was a 
rock. And just now the seas seemed very stormy. 
He felt he should have a little storm to weather in 
getting home. People’s minds seemed excited by 
the news from across the Channel. Something 
about the conquest of Malta ; and an emigre pam- 
phleteer who had been libelling the First Consul. 
He # hoped England would stand firm. George 
Crichton was returning that very day, and would 
bring the letter, so that, at least, was all safe. He 
had one more journey to make to find the cur6 
Madame had wished him to see : and then, home. 

George Crichton was all safe certainly, and 
returned home ; and Clapham seemed to me a 
little self-satisfied as to its usual prudence and 
sagacity in keeping out of scrapes. George had 
warned Piers, he wrote to us, of the danger of thus 
lingering. But that one commission Piers had said 
he must execute. And so the fatal day overtook 
him. And he was detained, it seemed probable, 
near Madame’s former home, not far from Port 
Boyal des Champs, whither he had gone to make 
one more search for the cure, who might, it was 
thought, be in hiding with some of the faithful 
among the peasantry. 

Madame was, at first, much incensed at the 
proposition of her intendant with regard to Claire. 


4 44 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


te Poor man ! ” she said, “ to such a degree have 
these whirlwinds turned the best brains and be- 
wildered the most loyal hearts. But the great- 
nephew, insufferable young man ! I suppose he 
would think it a condescension to endow my 
daughter with the remnant of the property of 
which they have despoiled our house.” 

“ But, Maman,” said Claire, “ it is not said 
that the young man entertains the thought : at 
least let us exonerate him ! ” 

“ What can you know, my innocent child ? 
Of course I do not suspect any young persons 
of taking such an affair into their own hands. 
This at least, the duty of parents to provide mar- 
riages for their children, the Revolution has not 
changed. From such disorganization France is yet 
preserved.” 

Yet, now and then she returned to the intend- 
ant’s scheme. 

“ Perhaps pride is after all the sin which has 
brought down our order,” she said one day to 
Claire. M. l’lntendant seems to have spoken 
deferentially and loyally ; and, as you say, the 
young man is not to be blamed. And if his moth- 
er were, indeed, of good blood ! The poor great- 
uncle is fond, no doubt ; but he says the young 
man is beautiful, let us hope also good. The 
family were always devout.” * 

But at this point, Claire, regardless of consis- 
tency, entirely abandoned the defence of the young 
man. 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


445 


u M. Piers writes that he is an upstart, a 
‘ dandy,’ ” said she. 

“ Ah, my child ! the English have ideas a 
little different from ours. Those fine manners 
which we used to cultivate are not to their taste. 
And now, they say, they are not cultivated even 
in France. How could they, the root being cut 
away. ? On the whole, perhaps, it does not speak 
badly for a young man that he should in these 
republican days have manners an Englishman 
might think too elaborate.” 

“ My mother !” Claire replied, “ I think M. 
Piers would judge well of manners.” 

“ No doubt, my child. For England, the 
Danescombes have excellent manners. And what 
has my poor child known better? I have been 
unjust to thee, my Claire. I should have accepted 
the Countess of Abbot’s Weir’s invitation for thee ; 
then thou wouldst have seen the world. What 
should have been tky world ; as far indeed as that 
can exist anywhere out of France ; anywhere in 
the world, now.” 

“ Unjust to me ! ” said Claire, “ my mother ! 
Never. Would I have left thee ? But let us not 
be unjust to any who have been good to us. M. 
Piers went — is detained — -for us, mother.” 

“ It is true, my child ; I weep for him, I pray 
for him, night and day. The most generous heart ! 
But, for thee? I cannot always be with thee. 
Sometimes I feel as if every day were breaking 
some ot the few threads that keep my body here. 


446 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


And before I go, I would fain do my duty for 
thee, if I knew it. M. l’lntendant was a brave and 
loyal servant always. I spoke hastily of him. 
God forgive me. I have failed in so much ! ” 

And then the little tender veil of concealment 
for a moment was laid aside, and the two wept in 
one another’s arms. 

For a little shadow was falling on Claire — a lit- 
tle shadow from one human form ; yet, within that 
shadow, an eclipse of the sun would, to her, have 
added little darkness. Slowly, imperceptibly de- 
cay and ruin were creeping on all that made her 
home, on all that made the world home to her ; ruin 
beside which, when it came, the crush of falling 
nations, or of falling worlds, would for her have 
added little tumult. 

No longer now so very slowly, or imperceptibly, 
the stages of declining strength were measured. 

From the chair to the couch, from the couch to 
the bed, from helplessness to helplessness. The 
steps we all have to tread, unless for us the last de- 
scent which leads to the shining upward way, is a 
precipice. 

And then came the keen March winds, penetrat- 
ing irresistibly through the carefully guarded win- 
dows. And then a few days of bewilderment and 
anguish. And then the difficult way was over ; and 
the mother was perplexed about her duties no more, 
or the duties of others. 

She had been led at last u by the right way to the 
city of habitation.” 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


447 


She received the last sacraments of the Church. 

There was no time for words or last directions. 
Bequests there were none to make. Madam had 
nothing to leave to the world but her Claire, and 
scarcely anything to leave to Claire but her bless- 
ing. 

She left her child to God. 

And as she breathed out this her last blessing 
and bequest in one, she smiled at Leontine, and 
then she looked with a very wistful gaze at Love- 
day and me. 

Then Claire pressed the crucifix to her lips, and 
breathing the one Name, which is above every 
name, the only Name for dying lips, the patient 
chastened spirit passed away. 

We thought there was a light on her counte-» 
nance, as of eyes that had met other eyes, long 
sought, and in one glance understood all that had 
perplexed. 

We knew that the patient, mourning, lowly, 
purified spirit was blessed at last with all the beat- 
itudes, comforted, satisfied, seeing God. 

Satisfied also for us, even for her child. And 
now, Claire also had to learn the old lesson of my 
childhood, to follow the motherly eyes “ up to His 
face.” 

And being sweeter and more trustful than I, 
she learned her lesson sooner and better. 

She was different from me ; more reasonable, 
more disciplined, and also more able to take com- 


448 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


fort in little things, refusing no crumb of comfort, 
no ray of light, from any side. 

Sometimes I wondered. 

To me the feeling in sorrow was, — 

“ My feast of joy has been swept away. I will 
not refuse the crumbs under the table as susten- 
ance. That would be suicide. But to give thanks 
at the empty table for the crumbs, and pretend to 
say grace as for the feast, that would be servile, false. 
And I will not try. I will mingle ashes with my 
bread: and my drink with weeping. God is a Fa- 
ther, my Father, the Father. He will understand.” 

But Claire, even in this sorrow which cleft her 
tender heart, as well I knew, was still like a guest 
at a king’s table. It seemed to me as if the old 
habits of her high-breeding went through her soul, 
and pervaded her religion. 

• She would not fail in any gracious form of 
courtesy because her heart was breaking, any 
more than her mother when her life was ebbing ; 
not even, if I may say so, with God. 

She opened her windows literally and symbolic- 
ally to the sunshine. She spread the little white 
tables with the primroses her mother had delighted 
in. She kept the room fair and pleasant, as if her 
mother were on a journey, and she had expected 
her home. And yet her dear brown eyes were 
often dim and red with weeping. 

“ The good God thought it worth while to make 
the primroses this spring,” said she, “ and should I 
fail to show Him I see, and care and am grateful ? 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


449 


And then she cared, Bride. She cared so much ! al- 
though she has so much that is fairer and better to 
care for now.” 

“ When I can give thanks, Bride, and be a lit- 
tle glad, I know I am feeling as little as she is feel- 
ing now. But,” she added, with a sudden burst 
of weeping, “ I cannot ; I cannot always ! Only 
then I hope God is making something deeper in 
my heart, that by-and-by there may be more room, 
and I may feel even more as she is feeling, yes, 
always more and more.” 

29 





t 



CHAPTER XXX. 

seizure of the ten thousand English in 
ance roused the nation from John o’ 
oat’s House to the Land’s End. At 
fc England set herself resolutely against 
the stream, regardless who pulled with her. 

From that time till the end of the war twelve 
years afterwards, whatever some factious men 
might write about the futility of opposing Bona- 
parte and his “ invincibles,” and however a feeble 
policy might reduce the war to “ neat and inef- 
fective expeditions/’ the nation went heart and soul 
into the conflict, her spirit keeping firm in victory, 
and rising with defeat. 

For twelve years we felt ourselves, every inch 
of us, one Nation, and a nation standing alone, for 
all nations, for all the kingdoms of the world 
against one devouring Universal Empire. As long 
as England stood, Napoleon could not assume the 
coveted title of “ Emperor of the West.” 

The symbols of the Hebrew prophets and of* 
the Apocalypse came into men’s minds in those 
days as no oriental hyperbole, but the natural and 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


451 


only adequate description of what was happening 
through Europe during those terrible years. 

Poor young Emmett, the Irish rebel, request- 
ed a reprieve of a few days to finish his pamphlet 
“ on the near approach of the Millennium.” 

“ Wild leasts which devoured and broke in 
pieces, and stamped the residue with their feet” 
seemed the most obvious representation of all the 
nations, at least of that one nation, which having 
cast off homage to her king and faith in her God, 
now crouched under the power “ dreadful and ter- 
rible, and strong exceedingly,” which springing 
“ from the sand of the sea,” from the dust of the 
earth, from nothing, made war with kings and 
subdued them, made war against “ the host of 
heaven ” and “ cast the stars down from their 
places.” 

It is difficult even at this distance, even for us 
who remember, to revive in our minds the preter- 
natural terror that surrounded the name of Bona- 
parte. Why should it be deemed incredible that 
he should attain any height of power, the Corsi- 
can lawyer’s son, the young artillery officer, whom 
emperors had become proud to call brother, w T ho 
disposed of thrones to his kindred or his generals ? 

How could it be deemed incredible that he 
should commit any crime, who, as we all believed, 
had murdered the young Due d’Enghein at mid- 
night ; who had caused Pichegru to be strangled 
in one prison, and Toussaint L’Ouverture to be 
starved with cold and hunger in another; who 


452 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


massacred his prisoners in Syria, and shot six 
thousand Russians kneeling helpless on the ice; 
who, when thousands of his own men fell, shud- 
dered a little at the blood-stains on the white uni- 
form they happened to be wearing, and as a reme- 
dy commanded “ only blue uniforms ” in future ; 
who never hesitated at a falsehood or a slaughter ; 
and for what object? The glory of France? 
He was not even a Frenchman. His own supre- 
macy? Ho man disputed it. It was little won- 
der if to some he seemed an incarnation of some 
preternatural power without human heart or con- 
science, and without human limitations, so swift, 
so unable to rest, so invincible in destruction, so 
unable, it seemed, to do anything but destroy. 

Three successive Augusts he lixed his camp at 
Boulogne, gazing menacingly across at our white 
cliffs — and gathering his hundred thousand around 
him to cross the sea and assail us. 

In the first August, 1803, England answered 
him by enrolling her three hundred thousand 
volunteers, to avenge her ten thousand detenus , 
and to meet the hundred and twenty thousand 
veterans at Boulogne. 

We laughed at ourselves and our voluntary 
defenders, freely, as the custom of our country is. 
Every town had its jokes against itself and its citi- 
zen soldiers (the old butt of wits from time im- 
memorial), the cut of their uniforms, or the hand- 
ling of their arms ; and Abbot’s Weir was not be- 
hind the rest. I remember well old stories of the 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


453 


heroic valor with which our gallant volunteers 
went forth with fife and drum to encounter a re- 
ported outbreak of prisoners of wad 1 , and finding 
the enemy to be nothing but certain white stones 
set to mark the road across the moors, returned 
safe but inglorious. And again, how on occasion 
of some review by some distinguished officer of 
the time, the manoeuvres signally failed in conse- 
quence of the bugleman having blown a quid of 
tobacco into his bugle. 

We laughed at each other, and grumbled at 
the powers that be, as our wont is ; believing in 
each other and obeying the powers that be all the 
time, in that inconsistent manner which amuses 
us, and perplexes and sometimes misleads our 
neighbors not a little. 

Not a, groat did the government pay, or would 
any Englishman accept for uniforms, arms, or time. 

Meantime Mr. Pitt still kept out of what most 
of us felt was his place at the head of the nation, 
was living at Walmer, commanding volunteers. 
Great drillings were going on throughout the 
land, in town market-houses, on village greens. 
Dibdin’s songs were sung everywhere, and old 
Scotch ballads were revived. “ Scots wha hae wi’ 
Wallace bled, Scots wha Bruce has often led,’’ fra- 
ternizing with “ Britons who never would be 
slaves.” 

It was an uneasy time for Quakers. To be a 
man of peace meant to most of us little less than 
to be a traitor. 


4 : 54 : 


AGAINST THE STREAM 


How much did it all mean ? 

Disciplined, and under able leadership, it 
meant something at Trafalgar, in the Peninsular 
War, and at Waterloo. 

Bonaparte never obtained a chance to prove 
what it would have meant on our own shores. It 
meant, at least, that the nation felt herself a na- 
tion ; and that every atom of the body politic had 
become for the time, an atom multiplied by the 
sum of the whole. It meant that we all knew 
there was something worth infinitely more than 
money ; and, many of us, that there is something 
worth more than life. 

Once more the eloquent words of Sir James 
Mackintosh, the Advocate of Peltier, in the “ de- 
claration of the merchants, bankers, traders, of 
London” rang through the land. “We deem it 
our duty solemnly to bind ourselves to each other 
and to our countrymen, that we will employ all 
our exertions to rouse the spirit, and to assist the 
resources of the kingdom ; that we will be ready 
with our services of every sort in its defence ; and 
that we will rather perish together than live to 
see the honor of the British name tarnished, or 
that noble inheritance of greatness, glory, and 
liberty destroyed, which has descended to us from 
our forefathers, and which we are determined to 
transmit to our posterity.” 

On the 2d of August, 1 804, when Bonaparte 
came to threaten us the second time from Bou- 
logne with his myriads, and his flat-bottomed 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


455 


boats, the pomp of his ceremonial was more 
splendid than at first. He had been decreed to 
be Emperor by the Senate on the 18th of May, 
and his Josephine was Empress. In form, noth- 
ing was wanting to the dramatic representation of 
the Roman invasion. The imperial throne was 
set up on the coast, the legions paid homage 
around. 

But on that same 18th of May, the English- 
man we acknowledged as our chief had his hand 
once more on the helm. 

William Pitt was Prime Minister of England 
once more. 

Our little world at Abbot’s Weir, indeed, had 
its separate shadows and eclipses. But hope was 
strong in us. We had a conviction, Claire and I, 
that the world must brighten again, simply be- 
cause we were young. And I always thought Pitt 
and [Nelson were about to finish the war, and set 
Piers free. 

In one respect Claire and I had drawn nearer 
to each other. 

After much thought Claire had decided to at- 
tend our church. She thought the religion which 
made England what it was, must be stronger and 
truer than that which had either made or left 
France what it was ; that the church which fear- 
lessly gave the Bible to the people, and the faith 
which laid hold throughout the land, not only on 
the hearts of gentle women to sweeten them but of 


456 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


rough men to change and save them, which made 
freedom and loyalty possible together, could not 
have wandered far from their divine source. Per- 
haps, also, Leontine and her Huguenot faith had 
unconsciously influenced her, and that century of 
persecution which had robbed France of her 
noblest; certainly Loveday and all she had seen 
in her. However it came about, so it was, that 
one Sunday morning she walked quietly across the 
market-place with Leontine, and asked if she might 
sit in our pew. And that Easter she received the 
Sacrament, kneeling between my father and me 
under the old altar window. 

“ If this is indeed the best I could do,” she said 
to me afterwards, as we walked across the pleasant 
Leas where Piers and I used to stroll on Sunday 
afternoons, “ my mother and yours would be glad, 
Bride. And I think it is. And I think they are.” 

She had always a strange sense, for one so 
buoyant, of the transitoriness of this life, and its 
continuity with the next. Perhaps her old Cath- 
olic training had helped her to it, linking the liv- 
ing and the dead, by more unbroken ties, than 
some forms of Protestantism. Perhaps, also, the 
convulsions which had desolated her country and 
her home. I always felt that to me life was in 
some sense more solid, to her more liquid ; to me 
as the firm land which could only be parted by 
earthquakes, to her as the waves of a changing sea 
forever heaving and parting, while bearing us on 
to the invisible shore. 


AGAINST THE STREAM \ 


457 


She spoke of death more easily than 1 could ; 
more as one of “ the incidents of life,” as one of 
its separations, and not always the worst. 

Now and then little letters came to us from 
Piers, quite cheerful, insisting that he w T as not 
wasting his time, that he was quite well treated, 
was earning his living, and gaining valuable ex- 
perience. 

In the first he sent a message to Madame, very 
reticent and deferential, but not very bright as to 
the state of her property, although the ci-divant 
intendant was preparing, he hoped, to send her 
some remittances. 

In the second, having heard of Madame’ s death, 
all his reticence was gone. He poured out all his 
heart to me about Claire. If I thought there was 
any chance of her caring for him, I was to tell her 
now ; inferior in rank and position, in everything, 
as he was, he loved her.. He was sure I must 
know; he almost thought she must know. He 
almost feared she must know so well that she could 
not care for him, or he should have known that 
she did. And if she did not, could not ever care, 
I was not to breathe a word, but to be as a sister 
to her always. He was sure our father would care 
for her as a child. But if only there could be the 
right to do it, etc., etc. 

And I told our father ; and quite simply he 
went to Claire. And so the perplexities and un- 
certainties were over. And Claire became our 
own, and wrote, herself, a few words to Piers, only 


458 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


a few, because it was so doubtful if they would 
reach him. She said it was for her he had become 
a prisoner, and it was but his due. But the little 
letter did reach him, and seemed to be as satisfac- 
tory to him as a volume. 

Thenceforth they corresponded, and those let- 
ters which I never saw wonderfully lightened the 
separation, even to me ; they made Claire so 
happy, that the reflected light gave me faith in its 
source, through all the darkness of absence. 
Probably, moreover, the separation by seas and 
continents lightened the other separation between 
the brother and sister, which must have come for 
me, when, however the love might continue, the 
whole weight of his heart’s confidence and care 
came to rest on another. 

I seemed to gain a sister in Claire before I 
parted with anything of a brother to Piers’s 
bride. 

Moreover, this betrothal, which my father wish- 
ed to be known at once, had an unforeseen effect 
on the relations between Amice and her grand- 
mother. 

One morning when I was tying sweet-peas in 
the upper terrace of our garden, to my wonder and 
joy, Amice herself came out from the Aladdin’ s- 
lamp-like-door of the little subterranean passage, 
and walked up the steep slope. I was too surpris 
ed even to run and meet her. The “ honor due,” 
as I knew Amice felt, to Madam Glanvil, had so 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


459 


sealed my lips, and made me shrink from anything 
like a clandestine interview. 

We shook hands and kissed, without any extra 
demonstrations, as if we had only parted yesterday. 
Indeed we had lived together all the time, although 
it was a year since we had met ; because, what- 
ever happened, I knew always what Amice was 
thinking and feeling about it. And Amice was at 
all times rather like a boy, as Piers used to say, or 
rather like her grandmother, as to demonstration 
of feeling. 

“ Granny sent me ! ” said she with a dry lit- 
tle smile. “ She said to me this morning at break- 
fast, when Cato and Caesar had left us, — 

“ i Child ! with all your patience and submis- 
sion, you are as proud as any Glanvil of them all ; 
and that is the only excuse for you. If you had 
been humble enough to fret, and cry, and rage a 
little like other girls, it would all have been over 
months ago. I feel for Bride Danescombe. Why 
have you shut her out from Court all this time ? 
Of course you might have known I did not 
mean it.’ 

“ Of course I made no apology or self-defence. 
And she continued, — 

u 6 1 hope you are the better for the silence. I 
believe I am. But some one must begin to speak. 
And as I am deaf, and most used to speaking, I 
suppose it must be me. What is this about Piers 
Danescombe ? ” 

“ I told her of the engagement with Claire. 


460 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


“ ‘ Very ridiculous , 5 she said, but she looked 
pleased. ‘ The boy a prisoner, and the girl a beg- 
gar. However it is better than your poor great- 
aunt Prothesea and her Elder. If one is to fight 
any one, or love any one, but an Englishman, it 
had better be a Frenchman. It seems more natu- 
ral. One 5 s ancestors hundreds of years ago might 
have done the same. Besides it is rather a chance 
we Glanvils did not stay in Normandy, and then 
we might all unfortunately have been French. 
There are only two nations, after all, of really old 
family, the French and ourselves. The rest of 
them are children, parvenus, savages just civilized. 
Who had ever heard of Russia when the Glanvils 
came with the Conqueror, or of Prussia, or even 
of Austria ? Then, besides, I don’t like this par- 
tition of Poland. Not that I think much of the 
Poles. But we got over our little pilferings in 
the dusk, before history began, we old nations and 
old families. It is discreditable to be*caught doing 
these things in the daylight/ 

“I suggested that the Hohenstaufen and the 
Hohenzollern were not altogether of new blood, 
and that the Holy Roman Empire was rather an- 
cient. 

“ ‘ Hohen stuff and Holy Roman nonsense , 5 said 
Granny irreverently, not believing in history or 
in foreign languages, 4 that little French thing is 
not a Roman, at all events, I am glad to see by 
her coming every Sunday- to church. You may 
have her here with Bride Danescombe . 5 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


461 


“ 4 But Granny,’ I said, 4 do not talk to her 
about things Roman, or English and French.’ 

44 4 Do you think that I do not know how to 
talk to young women in love ? I was in love my- 
self once, and am not such a monster after all,’ said 
Granny ; 4 and,’ she added parenthetically, as she 
rose from table, 4 by the way, I have been think- 
ing a good deal. And as to packing the negroes 
in ships, perhaps John Wesley was right. Ebt 
that I think any better of the blacks,’ she con- 
tinued, 4 not a bit of it ; nor of the Methodists. 
An idle, incorrigible, chattering set, all of them. 
They may do each other what good or harm they 
can for me.’ 

44 Which was Granny’s form of adhesion to the 
abolition of the slave-trade, and the toleration of 
missionaries in the plantations.” 

“ Claire always said ‘ the discipline of silence ’ 
would work well,” I said, “ and it certainly has.” 

44 So,” said Amice, with her little dropping of 
laughter, 44 I have lost my only chance of 4 the red 
rose ’ of martyrdom, Bride, and am obliged to be 
prosperous as your friends at Clapham, and do all 
my good works to the music of silver trumpets, in 
the sunshine. At least until I can get to my 
poor negroes myself. But oh, Bride,” she said, 
her eyes moistening and her whole dear face radi- 
ant, “ all this means so much, so much, for Gran- 
ny ! And do you know she told me I might have 
the servants in for family prayer. 4 And a chap- 
ter from the Bible, or a Psalm, if you like,’ she 


462 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


said. ‘ Not too long, and take care that it is out 
of the Lessons. I will not ha^e any separatist 
rambling about the Bible wherever you choose. 
And a prayef out of a book. No ranting. One 
or two of the collects will do.’ And she concluded 
by saying, ‘I think we might have the Confession. 
The Confession is very suitable. I have been 
saying it over often lately, and I hope it has done 
me a little good.’ ” 




CHAPTER XXXI. 

OR two years our island was islanded as 
it bad scarcely been before. The Con- 
tinent was closed to our travellers. Few 
foreigners entered England, except re- 
luctantly, as exiles or prisoners of war. Yet it so 
happened that our little world of Abbot’s Weir 
was widened instead of being narrowed by the 
exclusion. 

One. of the prisons of war was placed among 
the bleak moorlands not far from us, where bogs 
and wild ranges of lonely hills made approach 
difficult, and escape, for a foreigner, almost im- 
possible. 

Our hearts ached often for the men torn from 
pleasant France to drone away the prime of life 
within those cheerless walls. 

The Latin inscription over the gates, 

“ PARCERE SUBJECTIS,” 

must have read like a mockery to many who en- 
tered them. 

However, with the buoyancy of their race, the 
French prisoners made the best of their cireum- 



464 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


stances, kept up each other’s spirits by tale and 
chanson, carved delicate toys out of bones, twisted 
chains, bracelets, and ornaments out of hair, 
thought it worth while even in that depth and 
darkness to make the depth and darkness as light 
and as tolerable as they could. 

With the Americans, men of our own race, 
who were brought there afterwards, it was differ- 
ent. They drank the cup to the dregs, as those of 
our race are apt to do, scorning small alleviations, 
refusing comfort. 

Some of us console ourselves by saying that it 
is the nobler animals, to which freedom is as the 
breath of life, which beat their wings against the 
cage and break their hearts against the inevitable ; 
that it is the very energy which makes our race 
strong against remediable ills, which renders them 
desperate beneath the irremediable. 

Yet the creatures who sing in their cages have 
surely also their merit and their strength. It takes 
at least as much courage to sing away despair, as 
to beat against the prison-bars. 

Patience has its manly heroism as well as its 
feminine beauty, is a “ virtue ” as well as a grace ; 
and certainly it takes a larger weight of Christi- 
anity to make us patient than some of our neigh- 
bors. 

Claire naturally made the French prison her 
“parish; ” she and Leon tine knitting and sewing 
warm clothes for them, and doing what was more 
difficult to her, making “ quotes ” in all directions 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


465 


for money to help her compatriots, whether in 
the form of direct alms, or purchase of their 
wares. 

In this good work she found a fervent sup- 
porter in a young French naval officer, Captain 
Godefroy, who was taken in one of the earliest 
naval engagements, and sent to Abbot’s Weir on 
parole. 

I cannot say the French officers were admitted 
without precautions into our homes. Military 
men in general were in matrimonial respects not 
popular among our sober-minded townsfolks. 
And French soldiers were certainly not regarded 
as the least perilous to feminine hearts. 

But Captain Godefroy was altogether an ex- 
ception. In the first place he was not a soldier 
but a sailor, wdiich in itself was something of a 
passport to our insular natures ; in the second he 
was not a “ Papist” but a Protestant ; in the third 
he was not gay, or debonnaire, or fascinating, or 
“ French,” according to any type we recognized. 
In the last place, (really in the last,) he was a man 
of some property, and had remittances, and paid 
his debts most rigidly. And so he became soon 
quite domiciled among us. 

Even Madam Glanvil invited him. 

I was at Court when she first mentioned him. 
She had seen him at Church on Sunday. 

“Who is that fine, sad-looking man,” said she 
to Amice, “in a French naval uniform, who sat in 
the free seats yesterday ? He ought not to sit in 
3 ° 


466 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


the free seats. He is a gentleman. Ask him into 
ours. Or stay ! the vicar might have him. I will 
speak to the vicar. He was quite an example, so 
grave and devout, never looked at any one, quite 
an example, especially as of course he could not 
understand a word of what was going on.” 

But Amice said hastily, “ He does understand 
English.” 

“ What is his name ? ” asked Madam Glanvil. 

Amice did not know. 

“Yery strange you should know he knows 
English, and yet not know his name,” said her 
grandmother. 

“ I know he understands English, because he 
asked me a question at our gate, and understood 
my answer. But of course I had no necessity or 
right to ask his name.” 

“ What did he ask ? ” said Madam Glanvil, 
“ and at which gate ? ” 

“ The gate at the end of the wood, Granny,” 
said Amice, “on the road to the moor. You 
know it is the limit of the parole for the French 
prisoners.” 

“ I know no such thing. A very accommoda- 
ting rule for us!” said Madam Glanvil, grimly. 
“1 should recommend the French prisoners, as a 
rule, to walk the other way. There are three 
other roads. And I have no desire to have for- 
eigners prowling about our cottages^among the 
maidens and the hens. Frenchmen eat eggs by 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 467 

the dozen, and no doubt think all fair in love and 
war.” 

Amice laughed, but her color rose a little. 
She was not given to “ flush and blush” as her 
grandmother accused me of doing. 

“ If you wish him to sit in our pew, Granny,” 
said she, “ you had better clear your mind first as to 
the eggs, or perhaps you might not enjoy saying 
the responses to the Commandments together.” 

“But all this time you have never told me 
what he asked. Why cannot you tell plainly at 
once ? ” 

“ I can and will,” said Amice. “ There is 
hardly anything to tell. It is a very short story. 
I was coming up out of the wood, and he stood at 
the gate with one of Honor Bosekelly’s grandchil- 
dren on his shoulder. He took off his hat, and 
with a very serious look, begged my pardon for 
speaking. The little creature looked quite at 
home with him. And the grave, sad look went 
out of his face when he spoke to her. He said he 
had found the little maid crying bitterly in the 
road for mammy; she seemed to have lost her 
way, and could only point up the lane beyond the 
gate, “ which,” he said, with a slight momentary 
smile, u involved him in a case of conscience, be- 
tween charity and truth, the gate being the fur- 
thest limit permitted to his parole.” 

“ Well, what did you do ? ” 

“ What could I do, Granny, but take the child* 


468 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


from him, and carry it to old Honor’s cottage my- 
self? ” 

“Ho, poor fellow! You were very clever to 
understand him,” said Madam Glanvil. “ Ho doubt 
he has a wife and children of his own at home. 
Those sailors always marry early. I will invite 
the vicar, and Mr. Danescombe and his wife, and 
ask him to meet them. You should write at 
once, if I could only find out the name. And you 
can ask the little French girl. She will be some- 
body for him to speak to,” concluded Madam Glan- 
vil, unmoved as to her conviction of the impossi- 
bility of a foreigner speaking English in any in- 
telligible manner. 

“ His name is Godefroy,” I said, “ Captain 
Herve Godefroy. His family is from Hormandy.” 

“ Hormandy ! ” said Madam Glanvil. “ Almost 
as good as a cousin. I have no doubt his fore- 
fathers fought side by side with ours. Poor fel- 
low ! pity they did not come over with us. His 
wife and children must be very sorry now, that 
they stayed behind.” 

And so Madam Glanvil, having provided Cap- 
tain Godefroy with suitable domestic ties, and 
almost proved to her own satisfaction that he was 
scarcely a Frenchman at all, broke down her usual 
rule of exclusion ; and the young F rench officer ob- 
tained the entree to Court. 

And so, as my selfish heart cried out at first, 
my Amice was stolen away from me! And so, as 
love learned in the end, our Amice found the ful- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


469 


filment of her life, and gave us Herve Godefroi, 
and Herve Godefroi gave her hack to us worth 
tenfold all she had been before. 

Madam Glanvil herself fell straightway into 
grandmotherly love for the young man. 

He had a grave and tender deference for her, 
which brought out all the high breeding that be- 
longed of right to her gentle blood. With him her 
manners took a sweet, oldfashioned, stately courtesy 
which surprised those who did not know that her 
eccentricities were but a crust underneath which 
lay, not only a generous heart, but a fine old pol- 
ish, inwrought, as in her old oaken furniture, from 
the use of centuries. It was a pleasant sight to see 
him kiss her hand, the tender gravity with which 
he paid, and the lofty yet half shy grace with which 
she received the homage. The first time, I re- 
member a faint blush came on the fine, fair, proud, 
old face, and gave one a vision of what it must have 
been before the strong lines of age, and of habit- 
ual care and command had stamped it. She said 
Captain Godefroy had evidently had a gentleman 
for his father, and a gentlewoman for his mother. 
Her courtesy entirely checked, as regarded him, the 
peremptory inquisition to which she subjected 
most people. She did not even ask him about the 
wife and little children with whom she had en- 
dowed him. She thought it might be too painful 
for him to speak of them. 

Indeed there was a kind of gravity and loftiness 
about the young French officer which prevented 


470 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Abbot’s Weir in general from gratifying its curios- 
ity by direct questioning, and therefore left a large 
margin around him for legends and myths on 
which any light thrown by casual revelations of 
his own, was welcomed, and multiplied into a 
hundred prisms. 

Not that he made any mysteries about himself. 
No man could be more frank and straightforward. 
Intrusive curiosity he was certainly capable of baf- 
fling. But in general he was simply unaware that 
people cared to know about him. Reticent he nat- 
urally was. It had, moreover, not been the habit 
of the men of the u religion ” in France to talk 
much about themselves. 

The Protestants of France had passed through 
a two hundred years “ discipline of silence,’’ living 
all that time deprived of utterance in public assem 
blies or in books, — by their very firesides watched 
by spies and invaded by dragonnades. The disci- 
pline had not been without fruit. It had not de- 
prived them of the rapid and acute eloquence 
which belongs to their nation ; but it had pruned 
from them the habit of boastful and superfluous 
speech. There had been little temptation to them 
to speak of what were their true glories, the gibbet, 
the stake, the wheel, the galleys, the massacred 
congregations, the violated hearth, encountered for 
truth and for God. 

My father from the first had taken greatly to 
him. They had had many hopes and many desil- 
lusionnements in common. And to Madam Gian- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


471 


vil he spoke freely. To all aged people his man- 
ner had a deference which was much more than 
manner. He believed in the venerableness of 
old age. 

And there was a clear ring in his rich tenor 
voice, and a distinctness in his measured and slight- 
ly foreign accent which always made his words 
intelligible to a deafness, as we knew of old, al- 
ways a little arbitrary and discriminating. 

And Amice, during these dialogues, took in a 
highly feminine way to knitting ; now and then 
interposing with a low word in response to an ap- 
peal of his, and always constituting to him the chief 
part of the audience. 

And I sat sometimes, and listened too, and 
watched my darling — my heroine’s heart being 
won; at first, as it seemed, from me, but after- 
wards, as I learned, for me and for all. 

His father was of an old family of Norman gen- 
tlemen. Hot sixty years before, in Normandy, six 
hundred Protestants of the generation of his father 
and grandfather had escaped from a fresh outburst 
of the persecution, happily the last on a national 
scale. Their homes had been broken into at night 
by officers of the king’s archers accompanied by the 
cures of the parish, and their children, especially 
their young daughters, seized from them with cruel 
sabre-cuts and blasphemies, to be thrust into con- 
vents, there to be taught the Koman Catholic reli- 
gion at the expense of their parents. Happily that 
district was, near the sea coast, and the midday of 


472 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


the eighteenth century was nearly reached ; and so 
the last large emigration of Protestant refugees 
escaped better than most of their forefathers. 

“Pity,” Madam Glanvilsaid, “your father had 
not been among those exiles, you would then have 
been fighting on our side.” 

Captain Godefroy’s mother was a Guiton ; — a 
descendant of the family of the brave Mayor Gui- 
ton, who held starving La Rochelle so long against 
the king’s forces. 

“ Ah ! ” Madam Glanvil admitted, “ I have 
always been sorry at my heart for that business of 
La Rochelle. I have often heard of it. One of my 
own ancestors was an officer of the fleet sent out 
with the succors which never reached the be- 
sieged ; I fear were never meant to reach. A bad 
business. His Majesty had bad advisers, and but 
too faithful servants. It nearly drove our family 
over to the wrong side. If it had not been for the 
civil wars and Oliver Cromwell, and the martyr- 
dom of King Charles, I doubt whether we should 
have held our politics.” 

“ It was a sad affair for us,” Captain Godefroy 
replied. “ It was among our nursery tales how the 
starving citizens of La Rochelle three times saw, 
with unutterable grief, the English fleet in the 
offing, and three times saw — what we had been 
used to think incredible — England baffled and 
driven bask on her own element.” 

Amice looked up with one of her bright flashes 
of intelligence and sympathy. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 473 

“Your nursery tales must have been of a high 
order,” she said. 

“We had certainly.no need to turn to stories 
of loup-garous and witches ’ caldrons for horrors,” 
he said. 

“ And little need to turn to Greece and Rome 
for heroes,” she replied. 

He smiled one of those rare smiles of his, which 
came from sources as deep as his sorrows and the 
courage which bore them. 

“We ought to have gained some spiritual mus- 
cle,” he said, “ in pulling two hundred years against 
the stream.” 

“ You can understand, Madame,” he continued, 
“ since you care for our history, how the Revolu- 
tion, which has proved in many ways such a deso- 
lation, seemed to us a deliverance.” 

This was certainly a little difficult for Madam 
Glanvil to admit. Except for the amends she felt 
due for the miscarriage of her ancestors’ expedition 
at La Rochelle, she could scarcely have let it pass. 

“ Time was beginning to set things right before 
the Jacobins took it in hand,” she said, grimly. 
And some of your forefathers were not altogether 
without turbulence.” 

“ For a hundred years,” he replied, “ we had 
many rich, and many noble among us, and we 
fought for our rights. Would you have had it 
otherwise ? ” he asked, not without stratagem, for 
Madam Glanvil would certainly not have done 
otherwise. If her theories were for non-resistance, 


474 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


her sympathies were undoubtedly with those who 
resisted. 

“ Little good came of it,” she said, evasively, 
applying to her snuffbox. 

“ So, many of us felt,” he replied. “ After 
1685, the year of the Revocation, we were poor, 
and for the most part of lowly station, like the 
Apostles. Our rich men had escaped to enrich 
England and Germany. Our nobles were exiles. 
Some of them, Madame, did fight, not ignobly, in 
your armies. Our congregations assembled in 
deserts and caves at the risk of fusillades. Our 
pastors were consecrated, as they knew, to the 
‘ vocation of martyrdom. 5 But our pastors preach- 
ed submission, and our people, for the most part, 
to the utmost limit of endurance (the rising of the 
Cevennes being ended), practiced it. 5 ’ 

Amice had laid aside her work, and was gaz- 
ing far away. 

“ I weary you with my old histories,” he said 
softly. 

“ No,” she said ; “ I was only thinking of the 
West Indian slaves. If some of your people could 
have taught them the lessons of patience, they 
would have come with force from such lips.” 

He paused. 

“ You have West Indian property? 55 he said 
earnestly. “ In St. Yincent a plantation was left 
to me. Once I wished to take charge of it and 
prevent some of the evils there ; and afterwards 
I often regretted I had not. I thought I had 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 475 

missed my vocation. But scarcely lately,” he 
added, as if to himself. 

This little interlude took place in very rapid 
words, while Madam Glanvil was expressing her 
divided state of mind by vigorously poking the 
fire. 

“ You should have kept to the old track,” she 
said at last. “ The pasteurs were wiser than the 
democrats. Revolution could do nothing for you.” 

“ Rot quite nothing,” he demurred ; u but it 
promised much. Y T ou will remember it is not 
forty years since in the Catholic churches at 
Toulouse they celebrated with pomp the anni- 
versary of the St. Bartholomew of the south. It 
is not forty years since the Pasteur Pochette was 
hanged, and three gentlemen -of Languedoc were 
beheaded at Toulouse for religion, or since poor 
old Calas, by long-since-disproved calumny — ac- 
cused of the murder of his son for turning Catholic 
— was broken on the wheel, and took two hours 
dying. 1 1 die innocent/ he said. ‘ Jesus Christ, 
innocence itself, willed to die by torments yet 
more cruel.’ The Catholic priests who attended 
him on the scaffold confessed, ‘ Thus in old times 
died our martyrs.’ Yoltaire pleaded for his mem- 
ory. In three years the sentence was annulled, 
and fanaticism to that extent was never possible 
again. At least,” he added sadly, “ fanaticism up- 
held by the Church and the law. The fanaticism 
of mobs is a hurricane no one can provide against.” 

“ Leontine says always that all our people die 


476 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


well,” interposed Claire, who happened to be pres- 
ent. “ Of our king also, and Madame Elizabeth, 
may it not be said, ‘ Thus in old times died our 
martyrs ? 9 99 

“ Ah, Mademoiselle,” he replied, “ if you could 
know how eagerly we, who have been so long 
accustomed to be banished outside our national 
history as proscribed and outlaws, take up and 
claim the heroic traditions we have in common 
with all our countrymen ! To he exiled in 
France , as we were, was in some respects harder 
than to be exiled from it. To understand our 
isolation,” he continued, “ you must remember it 
is not thirty years since one of our pastors died in 
prison for religion, in La Brie. And it is not fif- 
teen years,” he concluded, his voice dropping to its 
deepest tones, and tremulous with feeling, “ since 
all professions were closed to us and all means of 
livelihood except trade, or farming ; since our 
marriages were illegal, our children unrecognized 
as lawful, the rites of Christian burial of our dead 
forbidden to us. It was only in 1787 that mar- 
riage and burial were permitted us. Was it won- 
derful that we welcomed the dawn of the Revo- 
lution ? ” 

“ Ah, monsieur,” said tender-hearted Claire, 
breaking down into tears, “ I wonder at nothing 
in our poor France. My mother taught me that. 
Only I like to think that we, of the Catholic no- 
blesse, and our king; did a little to help you before 
we fell. In 1787, when these your wrongs were 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 477 

redressed, France had still a king and a nobil- 
ity.” 

“ Nobody doubts that your king Louis was a 
saint, or tit to be one,” Madam Glanvil said ; “ if 
he was not a sage.” 

Madam Glanvil was a little impatient always 
with tears. Amice had not used her to them. 
Their race was of the kind from which wrong 
does not draw tears, but strikes tire ; such fire as 
was at that moment flashing from Amice’s eyes. 

A little storm was gathering. 

Captain Godefroy dispersed it. 

“ Mademoiselle,” he said to Claire, “it was a 
happy moment for us when the aged Paul Rabaud 
preached the first sermon iti the first temple 
granted us, at Nismes, when the women who had 
faded from youth to grey hairs, in the prisons of 
Aigues Mortes were set free. It was a proud 
moment for us Protestants when Rabaud St. 
Etienne, himself ordained, at twenty, a pastor of 
the persecuted Church, grandson of our noblo 
Paul Rabaud, who had been from youth to past 
middle age a hunted Pasteur dn Desert was 
nominated President of the General Assembly of 
France, and said there to all the nation , 4 My 
country is free. Let her show herself worthy of 
liberty by declaring that the very word tolerance 
shall be proscribed — that unjust word which repre- 
sents religious differences as crimes.’ But it was a 
moment which touched a deeper chord when the 
grandson of the persecuted pleaded for the life of 


478 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


the great-grandson of the persecutes We could 
not silence the clamors which drowned the dying 
words of our king. We could only thank God 
for him that he died patient, calm, and believing 
as any of those forefathers of our religion, whose 
dying words had been similarly silenced long be- 
fore.” 

“For me,” he resumed, “I have indeed, hoped 
too much, from every direction. I hoped from the 
National Assembly, with Rabaud St. Etienne at its 
head ; I hoped from the Republic ; did it not pro- 
claim liberty and brotherhood ? I hoped from Na- 
poleon Bonaparte; did he not declare that ‘the 
empire of the law ceases where the empire of con- 
science begins ? 5 I hoped the old hatreds were to 
die out between class and class, between faith and 
faith, between nation and nation. My politics, 
therefore, are little worth any one’s attending to.” 

“Yet,” said Amice softly, “you would not 
wish to have hoped less.” 

“ No ! ” he said ; “ to hope all and lose all is 
better, infinitely better than to hope nothing and 
lose nothing. Is not hope itself something ? ” 

So in many a talk by the fireside, in garden 
and woodland walks, the summers and winters 
wore on towards 1805. And all the while Amice’s 
life and mine were separating and gathering 
around different centres. 

More and more the conversation, when we were 
all together, used to be between Captain Godefroy 
and Madam Glanvil. With Amice he had reach- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 479 

ed a certainty of understanding that needed little 
direct speech. 

The different types of their religion, as of their 
characters, fulfilled each other wonderfully. 

With her religion meant forgiveness, love, the 
forgiving Father, the Incarnate and atoning Son ; 
the loving, healing, softening Spirit ; the recon- 
ciled, happy, obedient child. 

With him it meant power, majesty, truth, jus- 
tice, the Sovereign to whom the profoundest loyal- 
ty, unlimited self-sacrifice, and unhesitating obedi- 
ence were due ; at whose lips we were to question 
nothing, from whose hand we were to submit to 
everything, in whose heart-searching presence a lie 
was impossible, on whose awful altar of truth life 
was a light offering ; the soldier sworn, as a matter 
of course, to die at his post ; the subject ready, as 
a matter of course, to seal his loyalty with life. 

His hereditary faith was that masculine Calvin- 
ism which has been the religion of so many strong 
intellects, of so many free nations, and of so many 
heroic hearts ; the faith in a Supreme Will, su- 
preme and unalterably just, which must conquer 
all wills, must be accepted, at whatever cost to rea- 
son or heart, must be obeyed, at whatever cost to 
heart or life ; the faith which in men has combined 
as much of daring and duty ; in woman, of devout- 
ness and heroism ; in nations, of law and liberty, 
as any in the world. 

Amice’s faith was rather in the Supreme Love 
which must conquer all hearts. 


480 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Both met and fulfilled each other’s faith in that 
redeeming Cross where Divine Love suffered to the 
utmost for man, and one human will gave itself to 
the utmost to God. 

Both met and fulfilled each other’s life in that 
lifelong service of the oppressed, to which they de- 
voted themselves ; every act and sacrifice of whichj 
God, in giving them to each other, made for them, 
step after step, from light into fuller light, on and 
on, as we believe, for ever. 

I cannot think or speak of that deep, perfect, 
ennobling love of theirs, except with the same grav- 
ity and reverence as I think of their religion. 
There were no misunderstandings, no fluctuations, 
no flashes of surprise in it. Their hearts were 
open all through to each other. 

And at last, one morning in the winter before 
the battle of Trafalgar, Madam G1 anvil said to 
Amice, as Amice was rubbing her chilled feet by 
her bedroom fire (the old lady went out little now, 
and grew less arbitrarily deaf, and submitted 
sometimes to be a little petted and caressed), “ 1 
do not think Captain Godefroy has any wife or 
children, after all.” 

“ I never thought he had, Granny,” said 
Amice. 

“ I suppose, now, there is no help for it,” 
Madam Glanvil rejoined ; “ and he may as well 
continue to come here as before.” Which was 
Madam Glanvil’s sanction to Amice’s engage- 
ment. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


481 


And the next day she wore on her finger a 
chased gold ring, with a sapphire in it, which 
Captain Godefroy’s mother had been used to wear 
on her wedding finger. 

And Captain Godefroy ventured to salute the 
stately old lady’s cheek ; whereupon, rising from 
her high-backed chair (she still scorned an easy- 
chair), and taking his two hands in hers, she said, 
“ You will understand her better, and be better to 
her than I have been. She is a good child, but a 
true Glanvil ; perhaps not altogether the worse for 
that ; certainly not the worse for being something 
besides. I never thought to have given one of 
our house to a Frenchman. But, after all, we 
were all Norman once ; and it was a chance that 
your forefathers did not come over with us, or 
even your father himself, in that emigration of the 
six hundred only sixty years ago. If they had, or 
he had, there would have been no difficulty ; and 
I do not know that we ought to let a chance like 
that keep you apart. At all events, I suppose it 
is too late,” she concluded, with a little dry smile, 
“ for an old woman’s word to keep you apart now ; 
you seem to have taken the matter into your own 
hands. So I may as well do like the rest of the 
wise despots, pretend to command by willing what 
you will.” 

And so saying, she took Amice’s hand also in 
hers, and held them together one moment, and 
then, not without some quivering of lips and tot- 


3i 


482 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


tering of limbs, but declining all sympathy or 
assistance, she left them together, and went slowly 
up the old oak stairs alone to her chamber. 




CHAPTER XXXII. 

LDAM GLANVIL never walked down 
that old staircase again. 

Often, afterwards, with unreasonable 
self-reproach of love, when death has 
made love sacred, and unable any more to serve, 
she would blame herself for not assisting or help- 
ing her grandmother up the stairs that night. 

“ The first time for years and years I had not 
gone with her, first following as a child, and then, 
in after years, supporting her, and always waiting 
for the kiss at the door ! Even during the year of 
our silence — (‘which was indeed my fault,’ she 
would say, c all my fault, all my pride, my ungen- 
erous misunderstanding ! ’) And not even to have 
seen her go up that last evening ! In my selfish 
happiness, taking her at her word, when I ought 
to have known, and distrusted and disobeyed. 
She would have been pleased. And I can never 
do anything to please her more.” 

Tender trifles of everyday life, little unnoticed 
habits of love, which at any moment may give a 
shattering shock to our inmost being, simply by 
being stopped ! 



484 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


And I, not knowing yet tlie austere sincerity 
of grief, would vainly try to excuse and comfort 
lier. 

But Herve Godefroy understood grief, and 
Amice better ; the truthfulness of her nature, and 
also the terrible truthfulness of sorrow. And he 
let her grieve, grieving with her. He knew that 
such pain cannot be stilled, that the wound must 
have its anguish, if it is not to mortify, and 
spread the touch of death throughout the whole 
being ; that, so the anguish may work itself into 
the whole heart, making it soft and deep and 
tender, patient and pitiful. 

The very night of Amice's betrothal, the blow 
had come, that direct destruction of power, as if 
by the smiting paralysis of an irresistible hand, 
without warning or pain, which we call a 
“ stroke.’’ 

In the morning, Amice waited some time for 
her grandmother’s appearance (Madam Glanvil 
having great scorn of aid in her toilet to the last, 
so that no one ventured to intrude on her privacy 
until she rang) ; until at last she became alarmed, 
and rushing up the stairs, knocked softly at the 
chamber door. 

An answer came, gentle and faint ; and enter- 
ing, she found her grandmother unable to move, 
although her speech was happily unaffected. 

Dr. Kenton when summoned thought the case 
very serious ; and he hinted that one of the gravest 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


485 


symptoms was the — “ might he say ? — unnatural 
gentleness and placability of the patient.” 

But this Amice would not admit. She was 
persuaded, she told me, though she did not say so 
to Dr. Kenton, that this gentleness had been 
growing for some time, and that it was due not to 
paralysis, hut to John Wesley’s “ Thoughts on 
Slavery,” and to the use of the General Confes- 
sion. 

Yet she was not consistent with herself, for 
when I acquiesced, she burst into tears, and for- 
' getting the moral source to which she had insisted 
on attributing Madam Glanvil’s softened demeanor, 
she murmured, “ Oh, if I could only hear Granny 
scold us all heartily once more ! ” 

It was a vain wish. 

Madam Glanvil retained to- the last her objec- 
tions to “ scenes ” — to anything melo-dramatic ; 
otherwise, I believe, she would have found conso 
lation in summoning all the household (including 
first of all Cato, and Caesar, and Chloe), or, indeed, 
all Abbot’s Weir around her bed, and telling them 
how hasty and proud she felt she had often been, 
and how, terrible as it had been at first to lie 
smitten and helpless — she felt it happy, at last, to 
submit and lie low beneath the Hand that had 
brought her down. 

But, as it was, she did nothing but be patient, 
and said little but to thank every one for every lit- 
tle kindness — or now and then, when she thought 
herself alone, or alone with Amice, which was just 


486 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


the same — to thank God and ask Him not to let 
her be impatient — and often to breathe the name 
of Jesus, and say how much more He had suffered, 
Himself once helpless as she was, unable to move 
hand or foot, but also unable to hide His face from 
the mocking, prying crowd, while she could still 
move one arm — and saw around her nothing but 
love, and reverence, and pity. 

She took no farewells, except only of poor 
Chloe. And that was the longest confession she 
made, of sin, or of faith. Taking Chloe’s black 
hand with the one hand she could use, she looked 
at Amice and said — 

“You took good care of her. She will take 
care of you and yours. I am going where people 
are not divided into black and white, or into slave 
or free. All free there. Perhaps one day all free 
here. You will come, and are sure to be wel- 
comed on the right hand. Forgive me for hasty 
words, and pray that He may forgive, and that 1 
may not be told to depart. Saviour of all , make 
us all free, that we may ~be free indeed 

To which poor Chloe could only reply by sob- 
bing protestations of devotion and gratitude, and 
assurances that missis would get well, or be sure 
to have some high place in heaven, far above such 
as she, except for what the blessed Lord had done 
for all alike.’’ 

For Chloe had no objection at all to differences 
of glory in heaven, and could never quite get over 
a feeling that white people who, having all they 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


487 


could want, and being able to read and write, were 
bumble enough to become Christians, must have 
some higher reward by-and-by ; than black people, 
who being slaves, and having nothing that they 
wanted, naturally fled to the pitiful Saviour, as a 
hunted animal to its covert, because they could 
not help it. 

But when Chloe was led sobbing from the 
room, she said to Amice — 

“ She will never live, missie ! Poor dear mis- 
sis ! So like a lamb ! so sweet and meek ! She 
sees everything too dim and too clear. No differ- 
ence between black and white ! Poor dear missis, 
’tis terrible ! — and asking me to pray for her ! As 
if the dear Lord could not hear her better than 
me ! — me who talk like a baby, and she who talks 
like a book.” 

“ God gives the best things to the babes,” 
“Amice said; “and Jesus told us to be like the 
children. So pray, Chloe ! Pray ! ” 

“ Do you think, missie, poor Chloe has got to 
begin now to pray for poor dear missis ? When 
missis called us lazy brutes and uglier still, need 
to pray then ! But now she so sweet, like a lamb 1 
Nothing to ask, nothing to do, but praise the Lord 
night and day, and cry like a child.” 

Madam G1 anvil spoke little, but once again she 
murmured, “ Thou Saviour of all , make us all 
free , that we may be free indeed .” Strangely the 
simple words struck to Amice’s heart ; they were 
the last in those “ Thoughts of John Wesley on 


488 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Slavery ,” which her grandmother had once thrown 
angrily into the fire. 

So, all through that summer and autumn of 
1805, the shadow of death lay on the old house at 
Court, and a high and brave spirit was slowly 
divesting itself of much that cannot be carried on 
that lonely journey ; having already put away all 
sense of property, except as a provision for those 
who are left below, and now laying aside pride, 
and hard judgment, and much prejudice, that so, 
when the last step came, nothing might be left but 
to commend herself, bare and destitute, but re- 
deemed and reconciled, confidingly, into the Fa- 
ther’s hands. 

Following the slowly departing spirit along 
that silent solemn way, those in the old house had 
little thought to spare for the tumults in the world 
around ; although, as winds and storms swept and * 
wailed through the woods, and battered and can- 
nonaded the old house with noisy display of force 
(so feeble compared with the silent foe within), all, 
except the sufferer, knew too well that a fiercer 
storm of war and peril was raging around Eng- 
land. The fleets of Kelson and Yilleneuve were 
being tossed and driven by those autumnal gales. 

Never, men said, since the Armada threatened 
England, had her peril been as great as now. 

Once more, as we all knew (and for the last 
time, which we knew not), Napoleon Bonaparte 
was menacing us on the shores of France, and 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


489 


with him the Grand Army, a hundred and thirty 
thousand men, with transports ready to convey 
them. “ Give me command ef the Channel for 
twelve hours,” he said, “ et VAngleterre awra 
vecuP And, meantime, Admiral Yilleneuve, who 
was to give him that command, and Nelson, who 
was to restrain Yilleneuve, were wandering, we 
knew not where, on the high seas. We only knew 
that the French fleet had gone to the West Indies, 
and Nelson after it, with a far inferior force, which 
numerical inferiority, however, in itself, gave us 
little uneasiness. 

The first good news we received was that Yil- 
leneuve and his ships, driven by Nelson from the 
West Indies, and then missed by him, had been 
encountered by Sir Robert Calder cruising in the 
Channel, with at least this result of victory, that 
the French fleets had to abandon the protection 
of the flotilla intended to transport the invaders, 
and the Emperor withdrew with the Grand Army 
to carry on the war in Germany. For which ser- 
vice England, accustomed to naval victories more 
undeniable, administered in a lofty way rather re- 
buke than thanks to Sir Robert Calder. 

Napoleon had withdrawn. But we were still 
in uncertainty as to the destination of the French 
and Spanish fleets. Nelson, shattered by his ha- 
rassing pursuit of Yilleneuve, was taking his last 
rest in his country house, when the news reached 
him that Yilleneuve was safe, in a trap, at Cadiz. 
The irresistible call of patriotism touched his heart 


490 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


once more, he offered his services to the Admiral- 
ty, and, on the 22d of September, arrived at Ports- 
mouth, to take command of the fleet. Exultation 
and sorrow were strangely blent through England 
in that departure ; as, a few weeks afterwards, 
when 

“ Home they brought her warrior, dead.” 

We heard how the people crowded around him 
on the shore, not idly gazing, but weeping around 
him, and even kneeling to implore blessings on 
him. So he sailed, in the Victory , taking his 
coffin with him, made out of the mast of the 
JO Orient. 

Two days afterwards Bonaparte left Paris for 
his campaign against Russia and Austria ; and our 
statesmen began to feel stronger than for many 
years, believing that they had, at last, secured in 
the alliance recently concluded with Austria and 
Russia a powerful coalition against Napoleon. 
William Pitt was full of hope in this alliance ; but 
the heart of England rested not so much on his 
alliances, as on himself ; on himself, and on Nel- 
son, her two mighty sons ; little dreaming that 
neither of them was to be with us by the new 
year. 

The times were perilous, indeed, for England ; 
but with Pitt and Nelson to think and to fight for 
us, we felt the world no chaos. Rapidly indeed 
the thinking and the fighting were wearing out 
the heart and brain of the two on whom all Eng- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


491 


land was leaning. But this, in those days, we 
knew not. We had our Atlas and onr Hercules ; 
and they did their work cheerily and gallantly, as 
the heroes do, making little of it ; while we little 
thought how heavily the world they bore up was 
pressing on the shoulders, or that the labors were 
draining away the life. 

On the 21st of October, early in the morning, 
the long watching by the death-bed at Court was 
over. The hush of awe had succeeded to the 
hush of anxious watchfulness. 

Amice had sent the weary nurses and servants 
to rest, and was left alone for a while beside her 
dead. 

She opened the window, and listened to the 
flow of the river, and the sweep of the wind 
through the autumnal woods, and the song of a 
few robins, calm, autumnal, full of a quiet content, 
all rapture of love and hope long past. It was 
the first time she had looked on the outer world 
for so long ! And now it seemed such a long way 
off, “ altogether the other world,” she said. “ My 
world was the spiritual world, the unseen, where 
she had gone, where the spirit really always 
dwells, as unseen always as hers now. She was 
near ; and God, and our Lord, and the loving 
Spirit. The woods, the old familiar garden, even 
the singing birds, were far away . I felt it once 
before, in a measure, when I knelt beside Chloe 
in the church on the New Year’s Eve of the cen- 


492 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


tury. The wind, the very sky, so pure and deli- 
cate in its morning tints, the birds, flowers, were 
material, mortal, corruptible. And she and I had 
always and had still what was incorruptible and 
faded not away. She has now that only. And in 
those first moments I felt her not gone , but brought 
nearer than ever before.” 

It seemed a time when barriers were broken 
down, and veils rent from the top to the bottom. 
The world grew larger and nearer, the struggling, 
sinning, suffering world, with God loving it. And 
then two things came before her like visions. The 
French and English fleets, which Herve Godefroy 
said he thought must ere long be joined in battle, 
the human beings, countrymen of hers and of 
his, fighting and struggling for the mastery and 
dying there ; and the slaves in the West Indies, 
men, and women, and children, too surely driven 
that very morning to their hard, unbroken work 
with threats and blows. What a chaos, what an 
arena of wild beasts it seemed ! And Granny 
was at rest beyond it all. But was God really 
loving all ? English and French, slaves and slave- 
holders ? And was dying, indeed, to go and be 
with Him, with Christ, who had seen the world 
and its battles, not from above only, but from 
within , from beneath — borne down in the battle, 
bruised, smitten, slain ? 

If then God loved the world, those with Him 
must love the world, and if He could bear to 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


493 


look at it, having created it, and loved it so much 
as to give his Son for it ; so could they . 

What then made them able to bear to look on 
the world, and looking to love it, seeing its evils 
in all the sweep of the wide horizon without its 
dimness : feeling its evils as those feel a fetid at- 
mosphere who have been all but stifled in it and 
have escaped from it, and know what pure air is, 
and breathe freely ? 

What makes it possible for any of us to bear 
the sight of suffering in those dear to us ? What 
could it be but hojoe f Hope of healing and puri- 
fication through suffering ; hope of rescue at any 
cost for the lost ; hope learned from Him who not 
only loved the world enough, through all its sin- 
ning, to give Himself for it, but hoped for it 
enough to deem the joy set before Him of saving 
it from its sin well worth the Cross ? 

They through hope able to be patient ; we 
through patience learning to hope. 

What then are they caring for f 

In its measure for every conflict, it seemed to 
Amice, against wrong, and injustice, and oppres- 
sion without. 

Supremely, for every conflict against sin and 
selfishness within. 

For this terrible European war, then, in its 
measure, as far as truth and justice are involved 
in it. • 

Surely, for the struggle, through English law, 
against the great wrong of slavery. 


494 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Supremely, for the struggle, through Christ’s 
Gospel, against sin and despair in the slave and in 
the master. 

To this last she had consecrated herself five 
years before ; when that high and prejudiced 
spirit, latterly so clear and softened, had been the 
only obstacle to the service. To this, beside that 
lifeless form, she consecrated herself again, as, ab- 
solutely and without reserve what the softened 
and lowly spirit which but that morning had de- 
parted, must now be caring for most on earth. 
The only obstacle now in’ her path was the great 
love which made life so precious. 

Should she let that great gift of God be a 
hindrance to obeying His call ? 

She made no vow, she only knelt beside the pale, 
placid, impassive face, and repeated once more the 
words she had uttered a few hours before, respon- 
ded to, then, with that last gaze, that wistful gaze 
not fixed any longer on her, or on anything on 
earth. 

“ Father , into Thy hands 1 commend my 
spirit ; into Thy hands to guide, mould, — into 
Thy hands, absolutely, without reserve, to do with 
me what Thou wilt.” 

Then, rising, she went down stairs. 

It was daylight now, though not in the dark- 
ened house. She went into the dining-room, and 
at the sight of the high old empty chair daily life 
came back to her, with the new great blank, and 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


495 


the reality of the greater blank and sacrifice before 
her, yet. She had not been there long when 
Herve Godefroy came. 

And as he- drew her to him, through her tears 
she said at once, not daring to delay, — 

“ The only obstacle duty placed in the way of 
that great duty you and I have recognized so long 
is gone. Tell me, what shall I do? You come 
of a race long used to give up its best to God.” 

It was evidently no new effort to him to meas 
ure what that duty might cost. 

For, holding both her hands in his, and press- 
ing them against his heart, and looking down into 
her tearful eyes, he said, — 

“ The like sacrifices were required of us for gen- 
erations. But with us it was the women that risk- 
ed the dearest, and the men only themselves. I 
see now how much greater their sacrifice than 
ours.” 

“ You seel must go,” she said, “and soon.” 

Then she led him up into the chamber of death. 
For a few moments they stood together there. 
And then, as they stood again together by the fire- 
side beside the stately old empty chair, he said, — 

“I see, my love; I know. We will go, in 
spirit at least, not apart but together. Our life 
here is but a moment of our life. And, whatever 
the moment be, the life shall be together, for Him 
and with Him forever.” 

They did not speak of her return. That hope 
was too precious, and too precarious to utter. 


496 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


And thenceforth their only thought was how 
to lighten the separation to each other. 

So that first day of death passed at the old 
darkened house at Court ; not altogether dark ; a 
day of death, but a day of duty fulfilled, of victory 
won. 

And, all the time, that terrible day of victory 
and of death was wearing away at Trafalgar. 

There, Nelson, smitten to death for England, 
was still inspiring Englishmen to victory. 
Wounded to death by a shot from a ship his hu- 
manity had twice spared, supposing she had struck, 
his face lighted up through all his agony, as cheer 
after cheer from his crew announced that another 
French or Spanish ship had surrendered. 

Duty, not glory, was the glorious mark he had 
set before his men ; sacrifice of self for England, 
let England’s recognition of the sacrifice be what 
it might. 

And at the last he thanked God that he had 
done that duty ; not more ; only “ that which was 
his duty to do ; ” his country had a right to all ; 
not more than duty, but he hoped not less. 

Weeping from end to end when she heard it, 
England responded that he had ; scarcely ab]e to 
smile as he had smiled in dying at the victory he 
had won for her ; since he who had won it was 
dead. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HE winter months that followed were 
dark indeed for us all ; — in the world of 
England, in our little world at Abbot’s 
Weir. 

The news of the surrender of the Austrian 
General Mack at Him, with his thirty thousand, 
had reached England more than a fortnight before 
that of Kelson’s victory at Trafalgar; and had 
struck the other great Englishman on whom we 
leaned, to the heart. Trafalgar seemed to make 
it yet possible for him to live. He struggled hard 
for life, and was often sanguine of recovery. But 
from the tidings of the union of the Russian and 
Austrian armies with Xapoleon’s, and of the coali- 
tion of Austerlitz, he never revived. The fatal 
news came to him in December, and in little 
more than a month — on the 23d of January, 1803 
— the great Minister, William Pitt, lay dead in his 
house at Putney. He was scarcely fifty years 
old. His friend Mr. Wilberforce said, “He died 
of a broken heart,”- — broken for love of England. 

The last words we knew of him to have utter- 



32 


498 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ed — “ My country ; oh, my country f ” — rang like 
a death-wail throughout the land. 

They had done their duty bravely, to the 
death, for England, those two Englishmen. Bet- 
ter loved, the country could never be again ; nor 
more fearlessly and disinterestedly served. 

We had great names still, — Collingwood, and 
Fox ; and one we knew not yet, lighting and mak- 
ing order for us, far away in India. But these 
seemed to most of us in those days of mourning 
but of the second rank. 

The heroes were gone, we thought, as men 
have thought so often. We had good and brave 
men left, but those whom we had lost had been 
something more. 

Amice was in London by the end erf Decem- 
ber. She had gone to stay at Clapham, with her 
cousins, the Beckford-Glanvils ; the present pos- 
sessors of Court ; to consult them about the ar- 
rangements for the property, and about her expe- 
dition to the West Indies. 

Thus by war, and death, and absence, our lit- 
tle circle had dwindled sadly. 

Piers still in that French village near Claire’s 
old home ; and for many months not a word of 
tidings from or about him. Dick F}Tord, wound 
ed at Trafalgar, and slowly making his way 
home ; Amice away preparing to go to the West 
Indies, for no one knew how long ; and Captain 
Godefroy, certainly not present with us in spirit ; 
there was great need that we should “ serrer les 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


499 


rangs thinned as they were, and press closer to 
each other, if we were to “press forward ’’ at all. 
Which, while we live, has to be done, and there- 
fore can be done — always. 

The Sunday-school especially occupied us. 
My father himself had undertaken Piers’ class of 
boys. He could not bear, to see anything Piers 
had begun languish or fall. He went to his Sun- 
day task very meekly, and with a strong sense of 
his poverty in didactic power and dogmatic defini- 
tions, but as regularly as he went to his daily busi- 
ness, the business in which he missed Piers at 
every turn. I believe (so strong was the Pagan- 
ism lurking under our Christian faith) that wo 
should all have felt it ominous, like the unaccount- 
able stopping of a watch, if any machinery set in 
motion by Piers had stopped. Whatever was laid 
aside, anything connected with him must be made 
to prosper. How deeply it used to go to my heart 
to see the dear grey head bending down among 
the boys ; the teacher being quite as much in awe 
of them as they of him. 

My impression was, that, as with us of old, he 
did not directly inculcate much, but drew out what 
his scholars thought and felt, making them give 
shape to many a vague thought, and unfolding 
many a repressed feeling, leading them uncon- 
sciously to plough and water their own ground ; 
and then dropping in seed ; very little seed, and 
often unperceived in its sowing, but none the less 
taking root, springing up after many years. 


500 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


And when he felt his poverty deepest, he had 
recourse to the “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” or occasional- 
ly to portions of “ Robinson Crusoe,” which never 
failed to interest them all, and make them children 
together, teacher and taught. 

Claire meanwhile prospered greatly with 
Amice’s infant class. 

Moreover, our Sunday-school began to grow in 
many directions ; for one, in the direction origi- 
nally foreseen by the dames. The instruction of 
the week had to be brought more up to the level of 
the instruction of the Sundays. And it was seri- 
ously in my father’s contemplation — which meant, 
seriously on the eve of fulfilment, — that Abbot’s 
Weir should have a week-day school on the Lan- 
castrian system, combined with some hints from 
Pestalozzi. 

Thus were the most desponding Cassandras 
among the dames justified. 

It was quite a serious battle. The French 
Reign of Terror was little more than a decade be- 
hind us. And my father was now proposing a 
measure even more revolutionary than any which 
had called forth accusations of sedition and athe- 
ism against Mrs. Hannah More. He proposed 
what she earnestly disclaimed, in a letter to one of 
her bishops. He actually proposed to teach the 
youth of Abbot’s Weir — the youth of both sexes 
and all conditions — to write. 

In vain Mrs. Danescombe warned, and Miss 
Felicity threatened. “ The pen would banish the 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


501 


housemaid’s broom, would supersede the spade, 
the plough, the needle. In the next generation 
there would be no more maid-servants, washer- 
women, laundresses, or sempstresses.” 

“ The men would write love-letters while the 
sheep were straying and the crops unsown; the 
maids would respond while the kettle was boiling 
over and the linen in rags. A deluge of corre- 
spondence would sweep away all honest work, and 
level all social distinctions.” 

“ Mrs. Danescombe and Miss Felicity might 
not live to see it — they trusted not — nor poor dear 
Mr. Danescombe, who had opened the dykes on 
him, charity might hope that day of ruin might 
not dawn. On the one hand, Yoltaire and Tom 
Paine and Jean Jacques Itousseau pouring in, 
through the sacrilegious breach of reading ; on the 
other sedition and heresy, envy, malice, hatred 
and all uncharitableness, — and 6 love-making 5 pour- 
ing out through the breach of writing ? Our poor 
brave soldiers and sailors might as well give up 
the contest. Napoleon’s army might be recalled 
from Boulogne, and his fleets lost at Trafalgar. 
But for England all was over. Over her it might 
indeed be written, ‘ England has lived. ’ ” 

Such were some of the murmurs of that stream 
against which, nevertheless, we pulled, not without 
success, though certainly not with the result of 
such a deluge of knowledge and such an universal 
fury of mental activity as was apprehended. 

Uncle Fy ford was neutral. The Sunday-school 


502 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


had not been so Jacobinical as he- had feared. 
Mr. Rabbidge was tolerant, but not encouraging. 
He had not seen any alarming passion for literature 
result from letters, as he had taught them. 

Reuben’s comment was reassuring. 

“ The good Lord,” he said, “ had mercifully 
sent the good corn through John Wesley and 
others, before He set folks on putting up the mills 
to grind it, or the ovens to bake it. The preach- 
ing had come before the teaching, the gospel be- 
fore the spelling-book, the converting Spirit before 
the letter ; and now the good words were there, 
the more schools there were to teach them, and 
the more pens to spread them the better.” 

Never was intercourse with Loveday Benbow 
more strengthening and hopeful than during those 
years of many changes and many perils. 

War was to her altogether evil, inhuman, dia- 
bolical. To her all victories w T ere darkened, as 
that one victory of Trafalgar was to all England, by 
the shadow of death. The roll of glory was writ- 
ten within and without, to her eyes, with lamenta- 
tion, and mourning, and woe. 

Self-sacrifice in dying she could understand to 
the utmost. Self-sacrifice resulting in killing she 
would scarcely place higher than a highwayman’s 
generosity. 

For Toussaint L’Ouverture starved in the dun- 
geou at Joux, for Andrew Hofer, the patriot 
betrayed and shot she could weep. Over Nelson’s 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


503 


dying agonies, lighted up by shouts of victory, 
she could only shudder. But throughout and 
underneath the great national conflicts, the old 
warfare was going on with which her life was 
identified. On this (however we might, any of us, 
be turned aside by personal anxieties, or by literal 
battles on sea or land) Loveday’s heart and eyes 
were steadfastly fixed. 

Once more the abolition of the slave-trade had 
been brought before the House of Commons ; and 
once more, after a large majority on the previous 
year, it had been thrown out. Yet this defeat did 
not discourage the best informed among its sup- 
porters. 

At last, experienced eyes began to recognize an 
uncertainty and division in the enemy’s ranks, as 
if they were on the point of breaking. 

Hot a few of the West Indian planters them- 
selves began to waver. Some, moved by the con- 
viction of the injustice of the trade, and others by 
a persuasion of its impolicy. Those who were 
watching closely detected a thousand subtle symp- 
toms that public opinion was veering round. 
Many hearts were touched to the deepest indigna- 
tion. Many consciences were aroused, if not to 
“ godly repentance,” at least to wholesome fear. 
The very presence of the whirlwind and the earth- 
quakes of war, of the immeasurable perils threat- 
ening the country on so many sides were like 
the guillotine en jpennanence before the nations; 
and many began to ask what accursed thing we 


504 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


might be harboring among ns which might be 
blinding the eyes of our rulers, and weakening the 
arms of our soldiers. 

The two great rival leaders, Pitt and Fox, were 
altogether one in their desire to redress this wrong. 
Pitt had supported it from the first ; had (Mr. 
Clarkson said) been “ steadfast to the anti-slavery 
cause from the beginning ; ” he had “ vainly 
sought to enlist France for it in 1788,” he had 
“ fostered it in its infancy,” unable, Mr. Clarkson be- 
lieved, from “ insuperable difficulties which could 
not be mentioned,” to do more ; he had given 
the weight of his unequalled eloquence to it again 
and again, and had at least “ kept it from falling.” 

And now that Pitt had died without effecting 
the abolition, Mr. Fox took up the work more un- 
trammelled than his predecessor, and sincerely de- 
termined to make its accomplishment one of the 
foremost objects of his policy. 

What Nelson’s grand battles were to England, 
every turn of the anti-slavery debates in Parlia- 
ment was to Loveday. She felt sure that the days 
when fifty thousand helpless captives should be 
kidnapped year by year in Africa, and as many of 
them as survived the horrors of the voyage sold to 
fresh cruelties in the West Indies, were drawing 
to a close. 

The very fervency of hope with which she 
looked forward to the approaching deliverance 
seemed too much for her sensitive and feeble frame. 
We had noticed with anxiety the gradual failing 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 505 

of her strength, the increase of the worn, hollow 
look, which indicated sleepless nights, the reluc- 
tant abandonment of one little work after another. 
We scarcely dared to speak of these things to each 
other, or to her. 

Miss Felicity, absorbed in her brother, did not 
seem to observe these downward steps at all. Phys- 
ical, like moral infirmity, w T as to her a stain on 
the family honor, to be ignored as far as possible 
in adults, and to be rigorously repressed in the 
young. Moral and physical failure were, indeed, 
hopelessly entangled for her, by that one case in 
which she accepted and condoned all infirmities, 
moral, mental, and physical, as the ruins brought 
on from without on her suffering brother, by a 
wicked and seducing world. 

Miss Felicity would have held it an insult for 
any one to inquire for her own health ; she was 
doing strictly as she would have others do to her, 
in never prying into Loveday’s. Having aban- 
doned the struggle to make her well, the only re- 
maining course was to let her alone, to be an in- 
valid, in peace. If you could not fulfil your duty 
to your neighbor by being well, the less said about 
it the better. 

Loveday had accepted the practice, and in part 
the theory. She never mentioned her own ail- 
ments ; and I believe she looked on her weakness 
as a humiliation, and in some way a wu-ong, which 
she inflicted on her father and on her aunt. She 
accepted her couch of pain and helplessness as a 


506 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


very low place, in the kingdom. She felt, I be- 
lieve, that there must be some especially had pos- 
sibilities in her, from which God mercifully had 
saved through chastenings which He never wil- 
lingly inflicted ; and she acted as if she could 
never do enough for her father and Miss Felicity 
and the world in general, to make up for being 
such a burden on every one. And thus, accepting 
the lowest place, and never seeking to make it in- 
to a platform (such as can be made even out of 
poverty and pain, without the aid of vows or reli- 
gious dress), all grace flowed naturally into her 
heart, and with it a sweet and calm content, and a 
glorious capacity for looking upward and enjoying 
a perpetual feast in the gifts and graces of all 
around her. 

Once, I remember, she said to me, during those 
dark months of 1805, — 

“ How can I ever repay Aunt Felicity for all 
her care of my father, for doing all I ought to 
have done ? My heart and mind have been free 
to take up the burden of the slaves. But she has 
been a slave all her life for me and mine. And 
that,” she added, “is what makes true church 
history so absolute^ impossible. The deaths of 
martyrs and the deeds of philanthropists are seen 
and heard, and can be told ; but who can tell the 
anguish of the homes from which the martyrs 
came, or the sacrifice of those whose quiet work 
at home made the public work possible ? ” 

“ Who, indeed,” I said, “ can count the secret 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


507 


fountains? Many may speak of our Amice by- 
and-by. But what would Amice, or any of us, 
have been without this little couch and all we 
have learnt here? ” 

Which observation, to avoid controversy, I had 
to follow up instantly by presenting her with a 
letter from Amice. 

Amice was more enthusiastic about Clapham 
than I expected ; not, certainly, about her cousins, 
the Beckford-G-lanvils, but about mine. 

“ It does one good all through,” she wrote, 
“ to be in such a wind of good words, and such a 
current of good work. It seems to me all so 
English, this Clapham world — patient, practical, 
conservative, reforming, impatient of abuses, pa- 
tient of precedent in removing them. English in 
a very high sense, not perhaps the very highest — 
not exactly the English of Shakspeare, or Bacon, 
or Milton, or John Howe, or John Wesley ; not 
blind to the value of earthly good things, not at 
all, yet really holding them not as owners but 
as stewards, — well-salaried stewards certainly, but 
faithful. The giving is large; almost large, I 
think, in proportion to the living. It is certainly 
not a case of ‘no purse, and only one coat, 5 nor 
of John Wesley’s two silver spoons, and out of an 
income of thirty pounds a year giving two ; out of 
an income of one hundred and twenty, ninety- 
two, the private expenditure fixed, the giving only 
increasing. That is not the ratio. I do not say 
it should be. I confess also that sometimes the 


508 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


thousands of pounds subscribed do come out with 
a grand roll, as if they were equal to the “ two 
mites/’ which, of course, they are not. 

“Hor is the heroism so impressive, for instance 
as that of the French Huguenots, or of St. Paul. 

“ The ships are too well built and victualled 
to be liable to frequent shipwreck, or to “ hunger- 
ings often.’’ 

“ Hor does the literature strike me as likely to 
be immortal, except perhaps some sayings of Mr. 
Cecil’s. 

li Everything strikes me as being on the second 
level. Ho Luther, no Latimer; no genius, no 
martyrdom ; no perils, no glories ; no frightful 
ice-chasms, no dazzling snow-peaks, no spontane- 
ous paradises of flowers among the ice-seas. 

“ After all, are not all second generations apt 
to be on the second level ? Will it be different 
with the Methodists? Was it different with any 
of the Religious Orders? Was it different with 
the earliest Church ? Must not the Church always 
be Protestant before it becomes Catholic ? And 
becoming Catholic, in its midst must not new re- 
formers have continually to rise and protest? 

tc But, this granted, on this second level work 
of the truest, conflict of the noblest, charity of the 
tenderest ; a wide grasp of the evils of the world, 
and a determination to combat them ; a close in- 
vestigation into evils at home, and patient labor to 
remove them. Homes pure and tender, full of 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


509 


Christian activity, and of generous charity, and 
of able, effective helpfulness as could be. 

“And your cousins, Bride, are delightful. 
My heart warms through every time I enter the 
house. Harriet, “the Reformer” has set her 
heart on accompanying me to the West Indies. 
And I believe Mr. Crichton will allow it. 

“ A good, healthy, habitable working zone of 
the Church it is to live in. 

“ And yet, and yet, good as I feel the atmos- 
phere to be, and healthy, my ideal is set a little' 
higher and a little lower. You know you always 
thought me tropical. I want a little more sun, 
and a little more frost ; a little more poverty in 
life ; a little more up on the heights ; a little more 
down among the sufferers. 

“Well, we must have different zones. 

“ My Moravians, I think, will suit me. They 
are very ‘ still,’ which gives space for the heart to 
rise in contemplation, and very ‘ plain,’ which dis- 
encumbers for pilgrimage. 

“ A little band will, I believe, go out with me ; 
a detachment of them to my father’s estate. Mr. 
Crichton is a little apprehensive as to the i sound- 
ness ’ of my Moravians. Indeed, a certain section 
of Clapham does seem to me as if it would be bet- 
ter for a little more of Nelson’s childish experience. 
c What is fear f 1 never saw fear? It is afraid of 
so many things — of mysticism, and Methodism, 
and Moravians, and rationalism, and i reason,’ 
and science, and society. It sees so many danger- 


510 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ous subjects. It is curious that on one point its 
courage is almost reckless. It is not at all afraid 
to encounter the peril of being rich. And yet, on 
the whole, there seems to me more in the Hew 
Testament about the peril of being rich than about 
the peril of any kind of curious opinions.” 

This was part of her letter to me. To Loveday 
she wrote : — 

“ The talking here is excellent and inspiring, 
but rather incessant. I shall be glad of a little 
* stillness.’ I want to listen, and look ; and I want 
exceedingly not to be listened to and looked at so 
much, as if one were something wonderful. You 
have made me more than half a Quaker, Loveday, 
my friend of friends. I want some ‘ silent meet- 
ings.’ I want to exercise myself by a good pull 
against the stream. Here one seems borne on the 
current. And I am afraid of merely drifting. 

“ The hour of deliverance from the slave-trade 
is, they say, fast approaching. I shall scarcely see 
it in England. But you will. And I shall feel it 
among my 1 black mankind . 5 And we shall rej’oice 
together . 55 

I noticed that Loveday’s eyes moistened, and 
her voice quivered, as she read aloud that last sen- 
tence. 

“ ¥e shall certainly all feel it somewhere , 55 she 
said; “and we shall certainly rej’oice together. 
God knows where. And He knows best . 55 

And in February Amice wrote me another 
letter : — 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


511 


“ I have seen the two great funerals,” she 
said ; “ the mourners, all England. Not solemnity 
only and reverent silence was there when Nelson 
was borne through the crowded streets to St. 
Paul’s, but weeping, and sobbing, and bitter 
lamentation. 

“And in "Westminster Abbey, little more 
than a month afterwards, England had to lay the 
other son in whom she trusted. Mr. Wilberforce, 
the friend of years, bore the banner before the cof- 
fin of William Pitt. 

“Both Nelson and Pitt, so young! In the 
prime of life ! Both worn out for England. What 
last words they have left echoing through every 
heart — 

* My country, oh, my country 1 ” 

And the great motto — 

* England expects every man to do his duty/ 

What words to nerve and to inspire ! Country and 
duty; and that ‘expect? I delight in that. The 
very highest is but ‘ that which it was our duty to 
do.’ What seed for heroic work in others ! 

“ And yet, where are they, the heroes, now ? 

“ Mr. Wilberforce is indeed a good soldier in 
a good fight. And I suppose the real heroes do 
have that easy, cheery look ; not borne down by 
their labors, but bearing others up. And 1 suppose 
age after age has wailed the same death wail when 
its best were laid in the dust. In God’s battles, I 


512 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


know, leaders cannot fail. But for England? 
Where can she look now ? ” 

She did not know that among the mourners 
around the grave of Pitt was Arthur Wellesley, 
just returned from the Mahratta war, and his vic- 
tories at Assay. 




CHAPTER XXXIY. 



^NXIETIES deepened on ns in our little 
home-world, as well as in our world of 
England. 

Francis had not prospered, as had 
been predicted, at the university. Every one had 
expected much of him, and he of himself. But 
he had simply glided through; and, at the end 
of the second year, rumors had reached my father 
of debt. 


He questioned me, and made me tell all that 
Piers had done to save Francis, for so long. 1 
had never seen him so roused. 

“ Debt, to the middle classes, is like cowardice 
to a soldier,” he said. “ A man who has the habit 
of it — who does not mind it as long as it only in- 
conveniences other people — has lost all backbone 
and muscle. He has done with living, and can 
only be dragged and pushed through life at other 
people’s cost.” 

He reproached himself. 

“Euphrasia, you were right!” he said, “I 
have been blind in refusing to recognize the evil.” 

But Mis. Danescombe endeavored to excuse. 


33 


514 : 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


“ They are gentlemanly debts, Mr. Danes- 
combe,” she said. “ It is a comfort that my poor 
Francis has not degraded himself by throwing 
himself away on low associates. You see, his 
tastes are all so refined. Books, Mr. Danescombe. 
He was always so particular, poor fellow, about the 
bindings of his books. And no doubt these young 
noblemen and gentlemen of fortune he has written 
about, who were so pleased to come to his rooms, 
could not be entertained quite like ordinary peo- 
ple. He will learn the value of money in time. 
He was always open-handed.” 

My father shook his head. 

“ Euphrasia, for heaven’s sake,” he said, l( let 
us call things by their right names. If it had 
been a young man’s careless generosity, I would 
have had more hope. To give to equals or infe 
riors may, at least, be giving . To get into debt, 
to entertain people above us, is simply bargaining 
and swindling — buying a position we have no 
right to with money we have no right to. It is 
the sin of the Pharisee and of the publican com- 
bined.” 

“ But this once we must give him a chance,” 
she pleaded to him. 

“ The only chance,” my father said, “ is to let 
him feel the weight ; to let him feel that these 
easy, good-natured, selfish habits are tying and 
binding him with chains more difficult to bear, in 
the end, than it is to say £ no ’ in the beginning.” 

“ But these gentlemen who have accommo- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


515 


dated him,” she said. “ It would be such a dis- 
grace ! ” 

“ Gentlemen ! ” exclaimed my father. “ Let 
it be a disgrace. It is a disgrace. I will pay the 
butchers, and bakers, and laundresses. The gen- 
tlemen may abandon him, and wait.” 

He was not to be moved. The rock at the 
basis of his nature was reached, and nothing 
would make him yield. 

My stepmother turned to me. 

A new tie began to spring up between us. 

She wept, and bewailed herself and Francis, 
and thanked Piers and me for what she called our 
generosity ; and — which touched me most — she 
said all might be right yet, if only Piers could 
come back. 

The ice-crust between us was altogether 
broken. 

I used to sit for hours with her in the oak par- 
lor, listening to her, and trying to respond in a 
way which would not wound her. 

We had the whist-parties, and the tea-parties, 
as usual, and she was more than usually com- 
plaisant and attentive to every one. 

She kept up all the old forms of entertainment. 
She was so afraid Abbot’s Weir should scent out 
anything wrong about Francis. 

But, afterwards, she would give way altogether, 
and declare she was a monster to be able to seem 
unmoved when that precious boy was perhaps 
starving, or in prison. 


516 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


I felt very sure that starving would not be the 
form in which Francis would suffer debt to press 
upon him. But a debtors’ prison was by no means 
an unreal, or a very tolerable, dread in those days. 

It made my heart warm towards Francis just 
to feel how she loved him, and to her to feel 
how she could love. 

The self-reproaches which I had inflicted on 
myself in my childhood, sitting at my sewing, 
on that window-seat, came back to me. 

Surely, I thought, if I had loved my step- 
mother more, and Francis, things would have 
been better. I should have penetrated to her 
heart sooner. We should have been more united 
as a family, and more able to help each other. 

And yet the excuses with which she excused 
him to herself were as repugnant to me as to my 
father. 

At last one morning came a letter in the labo- 
riously neat handwriting of an uneducated person, 
addressed to Piers, with “ Urgent ” on the cover. 

After a little hesitation my father opened it, 
and to his perplexity found it signed in our fam- 
ily name — “ Dionysia Danescombe.” Slowly the 
meaning dawned on him. It was from some one 
calling herself the wife of Francis. “ He had 
wished the marriage to be concealed from his fam- 
ily for a time,” she said, “desiring to tell his 
father himself.” 

She had consented. She wished now she had 
not. Her father, also, had objected. His family 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


517 


had lived for generations in the village. They had 
a little farm and a general shop, and he did not 
like marriages with gentlefolks. They had been 
hasty and wrong, she feared. But Mr. Francis 
Danescombe had told her everything was sure to 
come right, and ever} r one was sure to come 
round.- Now, however, everything had gone 
wrong. Some of the creditors had found out the 
marriage, and had refused to wait any longer ; and 
Francis was in prison, and her father was very 
angry. He had never had any wish for his daugh- 
ters to marry gentlefolks, but if they were gentle- 
folks, they must prove it, he said, b} 7 paying their 
debts ; and she had always heard Piers was kind ; 
and she did not know what to do but to write to 
him. She was sure every one would help poor Mr. 
Francis Danescombe, when they knew. 

To my surprise, my father was less disturbed 
than my stepmother about this letter. 

“ Impertinent creature,” she said, u to dare call 
herself my Francis’s wife ! ” 

“ It is certainly no consolation if she is not,” 
my father replied. “ But I have no doubt she is. 
The letter is honest and straightforward enough. 
The poor child, no doubt, thinks Francis comes of 
the race of Croesus ; and she has, I fear, the worst 
of the bargain. It is a sad affair. But it may 
. teach them something.” 

“ Them , Mr. Danescombe ! ” she exclaimed, 
bursting into tears, “ you never surely mean to ac- 
knowledge such a connection. That my poor boy 


518 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


should be tied for life to a creature that cannot 
fold or seal a letter properly ! ” 

“ My dear, 5 ’ he replied, “ if the law acknowl- 
edges the connection, what can we do? The 
question, at present, seems to be to acknowledge 
the debt. And, indeed,” he continued, endeavor- 
ing to console her, “ I think there is a cheerful 
side to the affair. The father, you see, did not 
wish it, which looks respectable. And he is a 
village shop-keeper and yeoman ; — not one of the 
rich university tradesmen, who prey on young 
graduates. And a debtors’ prison is the kind of 
lesson our poor Francis is not likely to forget.” 

Every article in my father’s pleading was, I 
felt, telling the other way with Mrs. Danescombe. 

“ Indeed, Mr. Danescombe, I shall never be 
able to understand you,” she said. “ What consola- 
tion there is in the poor deluded boy’s having made a 
low marriage (which I do not for a moment believe 
he has) ; and if he has, what comfort there is in 
her father being not only a tradesman but poor ; 
and least of all, how you can think any good is to 
come of his being in a debtors’ prison, you cannot 
expect me to comprehend. I confess I think this 
is not a subject for pleasantry.” 

“ Pleasantry, my dear ! ” he exclaimed. “ I 
never felt anything more serious or less pleasant 
in my life. But the most serious thing of all is 
the wretched habit which brought the poor boy to 
it. I was only trying to hope that might yet be 
cured.” 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


519 


“ Wretched habits ! 55 she said. “ You talk as 
if Francis had been given to drinking or any other 
vice, when he has not a fault, but that his temper 
is too easy and his habits too refined . 55 

My father gave up the debate, with a sigh. 
And then he sat down at once at his escritoire, 
and began to write a letter. 

“ To whom are you writing ? 55 Mrs. Danes- 
combe asked. 

“ To the girl’s father , 55 he replied, “ to find 
out the truth and see what can be done .’ 5 

“ You mean to believe all that creature writes ! 55 
she said, “ and to leave my poor son to bear the 
suspense and misery ? 55 

“ My dear , 55 he said very gently, “ if it is not 
true, let us hope Francis is not in prison; and if 
it is, what better way is there of helping him 
out ? 55 

The letter was sealed and dispatched. 

And every morning after it was at all possible 
an answer should arrive, my father, calm as he 
tried to be, went himself to the coach for the 
letters. And I with him. 

On the third morning, the coach had already 
arrived, and there was a little stir and crowd 
around the door. 

When we came there was a buzz of sympathy, 
and way was made for us at once. A tall, spare, 
bronzed young man, partly turned from us, was 
helping to lift a wounded person of some kind 
into the inn parlor. 


520 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


A little subdued moan came from the sufferer, 
and then a cheery word of thanks from a well- 
known voice. 

And in another moment my father and I were 
standing with our own Piers, hand in hand, beside 
poor Dick Fyford, lamed at Trafalgar, and only 
landed, owing to some accidents of weather, the 
day before, on our coast. 

“ Picked him up at sea,” said Dick, indicating 
Piers. 

With which vague vision of Piers floating from 
Lorraine to England on some ancient Ocean River, 
we had for the time to be content ; cousin Dick 
himself being the first subject of attention. 

How content we were, I recollect to-day as 
distinctly, as if that were yesterday. It was like 
springing straight from the breakers to the fireside. 
The whole world became terra firma once more. 
Everything, I was persuaded, must go right now ; 
the French war ; the abolition of the slave trade ; 
Francis his and debts and marriage ; Amice and her 
love, and her work for her slaves ; Abbot’s Weir, 
England, the world. And all because that one 
parting was over ! 

So long ago ! So many partings since, without 
meeting again ! Without the meeting again yet. 
And now, at last, so near the meetings ; so nearly 
past all the partings, at least the partings from be- 
ing left behind , is it any wonder my heart should 
bound sometimes, more like a happy child’s than 
an old woman’s ? Is it any wonder that looking 


AGAINST TIIE STREAM. 


521 


back to that return of ray brother, the tears of joy 
come into my eyes again, while I feel now it was 
nothing but a shadowy glimpse and a momentary 
vision of what is to come, and is not to pass away ? 




CHAPTER XXXY. 

HERE were so many in want of help in 
onr little world when Piers came back to 
us, that there was little time to discuss 
his own adventures. Besides Piers’s 
genius was not exactly narrative. For many years 
some casual incident or remark would continue to 
bring out new fragments in his French experiences, 
but it was not in his way to make himself the hero 
of a consecutive autobiographical story. We had 
to put our “ Odyssey ” together as best we could 
out of stray allusions and episodes. 

On one point he insisted persistently ; and this 
was, that he owed his escape to Claire, to the easy, 
idiomatic French into which we had naturally fallen 
with her from childhood, and to the friendly aid of 
the people who remembered her family, in reach- 
ing the coast. 

It was a fresh link between these two to have 
that terra incognita to all besides, the scenes of 
Claire’s childhood, familiar ground to them. 

Moreover, in those three years, the world of 
books had opened on Piers. 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


523 


‘He had picked up fragments of the old libraries 
of the gentlemen of Port Royal, classical and math- 
ematical, in farmhouses near the desolated ab- 
bey. He had found a safeguard from restless re- 
grets and wishes in sharpening his mind against 
old mathematical problems. In his banishment 
from those he loved and could serve in the pres- 
ent, the great men of the past, workers and think- 
ers had come near to him ; the life of the past had 
become a reality, and a school to him ; and he 
came back to us with the bracing and bronzing of 
Greece and Rome on his mind, as his face was 
browned and bronzed by the suns which had ri- 
pened the vineyards and corn-fields of France. 

In religious reading, he had been limited to a 
Port Royal copy of the Greek Testament, and to 
Pascal, so that in those years the incrustations and 
petrifactions of Mr. Rabbidge’s “letters” had 
been pierced in many directions by living springs 
of thought. 

But this, like the rest, came out in glimpses. 
The first obvious and certain discovery was that 
our healer and helper had come back to us, and 
that we had immediate need of him. 

His first labor was to extract Francis from pris- 
on, and to extract from him the truth concerning 
his debts and his marriage. 

Piers did not indeed find Francis in one of the 
miserable dungeons in which John Howard had 
discovered the prisoners for debt twenty years 
before. The walls had been whitewashed, and 


524 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


some of the more obvious and fatal grievances had 
been removed ; hut he found him penned in with 
a forlorn company composed partly of destitute 
creatures fallen there through wrong and misfor- 
tune, and feeling the humiliation and helplessness 
bitterly, and partly of reckless men brought there 
by vice, and minding it very little, as long as they 
could gamble with each other, or bribe the jailer 
to get them such food and drink as they cared 
for. 

Francis was depressed and remorseful. He re- 
gretted his debts, and rather repented his marriage. 
He felt he had lowered himself ; but at the same 
time he felt the punishment so far beyond his de- 
serts, that he was half disposed to regard it as a 
wrong, for which the only amende his family 
could offer him was to pay his debts, and to ena- 
ble him to make his married life as comfortable as 
circumstances would admit. 

“If you had been here, my dear fellow,” he 
said pathetically to Piers, “ it would never have 
come to this.” 

He had undoubtedly, he admitted, been too 
“open-handed,” but at the same time “he could 
not but be sensible that much of the result had 
been the consequence of his father’s being a little 
unsympathetic, and of the scandalous detention of 
the Ten Thousand by Hapoleon Bonaparte.” 

He felt himself a prodigal son indeed, but ar- 
rived at a very touching and hopeful point of his 
career. He had come to the husks. He found 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


525 


them unsatisfactory. He was ready to return. 
And no doubt his family were ready and even 
eager to receive him. Hone of them, he felt sure, 
were like the Pharisees. Piers was not a brother 
to begrudge the fatted calf. And thenceforth 
there was no danger of his trying the husks any 
more. 

The parable was complete, with one omission. 

The “ father , 1 have sinned ” was not there. 

Although outwardly certainly much in the 
prodigal’s position, Francis seemed inwardly to 
have a great deal more resemblance to the Pharisee. 

Tie acknowledged that he had made mistakes. 
He had been too careless. But after all, at bottom 
he felt himself a person of finer tastes and of a bet- 
ter heart than those who had stayed in the father’s 
house, and had got into no scrapes. He had more- 
over, been reading religious books. He felt that 
he had lived hitherto in too legal a spirit. He had 
not apprehended the mercy of God, the freeness of 
pardon, and the imputation of righteousness. 
There was something very affecting in the very il- 
lustration afforded by his present position. His 
father would pay the debt, and he would be liber- 
ated. But he should go out of prison an altered 
man, ready to take his degree, and to preach, he 
trusted, not without effect, as soon as he could be 
ordained. 

At this proposition Piers was infinitely dis- 
mayed. 

To him those words, which glided so smoothly 


526 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


from the lips of Francis, were such profound realr 
ties ; and so inseparably united with other great 
moral realities of which Francis seemed to have 
no conception ! 

Sin , as the one evil of the world ; Divine Love 
spending itself in redeeming agonies to rescue 
from sin ; giving itself perpetually in discipline 
which wounded and probed, in pardons which 
bound up and healed, to raise the fallen soul 
from the slough of selfishness up to itself — were 
so engraven on his heart — that to see any one 
grasping at the pardon not as a call back to the 
heart of the Father, but as an escape from the 
discomfort of regret, was to him the most terri- 
ble profanation. 

His greatest hope was in Francis’s marriage. 
He thought Mrs. Dionysia a young woman of 
considerable will and shrewdness ; and he was 
inclined to believe, that once convinced that a 
certain income had to sufiice, she would have 
conscience and sense to keep Francis within it. 

Francis would teach her “ letters ” (especially 
the letter “ h ”) ; and in return she would keep 
Francis within the limits of the law, and, probably, 
secure him a “ respectable ” career. 

The creditors were therefore, by his advice, 
satisfied. Mr. and Mrs. Francis were established 
in suitable rooms, with an allowance of which 
she was to be the chief steward. And Francis 
had every prospect, Piers thought, of becoming 
in her hands an altered man. 


AGAINST THE STREAM \ 


527 


One earnest remonstrance Piers could not re- 
frain from making, against the sacrilege of taking 
orders except from the loftiest motives. In this 
my father earnestly supported him. But Mrs. 
Danescombe and Mrs. Dionysia were by no means 
of the same opinion. They were persuaded that 
there could be no more respectable profession than 
the clerical, and therefore no profession more likely 
to lead to respectability. The character was sure 
to be insensibly influenced by the position. 

And as to Francis, he was persuaded that his 
motives were as lofty as could be required, ' his 
talents exactly suited to the office, and he himself 
quite a changed character. 

I was thrown back on my old theory of Fran- 
cis being a mere mask, a larva, with the creature 
inside lacking. But a kind of external conversion 
or transformation, such as is possible to an exter- 
nal creature, he did seem to have undergone. The 
whole outer shape of his life was altered. 

In Mrs. Francis’ keeping, he became prudent, 
punctual, orderly, respectable, to the utmost point, 
gave his family no trouble, gave Mrs. Danescombe 
much satisfaction, was, people said, a credit to the 
family, to Mr. Babbidge, to Abbot’s Weir. And 
what more could be wished, in that ancient, con- 
ventional world of my stepmother’s ? 

Piers’s second labor was of a more congenial 
kind. He could not at all comprehend how we 
had all taken it as a matter of course -that Captain 
Godefroy must remain a prisoner while Amice 


528 


AGAINST THE STREAM . 


went alone on her mission to her slaves. Ex- 
changes had been effected, and could be effected. 
The Clapham influence, the Beckford-Glanvil bor- 
ough influence — every influence must be used to 
set Captain Godefroy free. 

With his own marriage in near prospect, his 
matrimonial sympathies were very strong. He 
went to London and waited on the officials, stirred 
up the influences which influence officials, touched 
the warm heart of the Countess of Abbot’s Weir, 
and even moved the calm judgment of her lord, 
to discover what might be done ; and finally had 
the joy of bringing back Amice in triumph to our 
own dear old house ; (Court being at the time in 
process of transformation for the reception of Mrs. 
Beckford-Glanvil) — with the promise of glorifying 
Abbot’s Weir by a triple wedding. 

For our wedding was indeed to be triple. 
Our cousin Dick Fyford had at last found the help- 
meet whom he had no doubt Providence had de- 
signed for him from the beginning. Patience, the 
eldest of Mr. Kabbidge’s fourteen, had entirely 
captivated him in his captivity. A little older 
than himself (as had been usual with his early 
attachments), and, since the death of her mother, 
enriched by ail the experience of serving and nurs- 
ing involved in the care of thirteen brothers and 
sisters, she had been frequently called in by Uncle 
Fyford to give counsel and aid in tending Dick’s 
wounds. On our cousin’s impressible heart the 
natural result had ensued. Patience was more than 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


529 


usually lovable and wise, with a sweet voice, grace- 
ful movements, and a kind, bright face. His ten- 
derness was won by the sweetness of what she was 
to him ; while all the chivalrous protective manli- 
ness in him was roused by the thought of what he 
might be to her. It was, as he said, (and I believe, 
truly), after all, his first love. TJncle Fyford de- 
murred a little at first, for various social and pru- 
dential considerations. 

But many things concurred to soften him. A 
large portion of Mr. Babbidge’s congregation hav- 
ing waked up to the imperfections of his doctrine, 
had abandoned him for a new chapel and an 
orthodox minister ; whereupon Mr. Babbidge had 
abandoned the remainder to a successor more capa- 
ble of sustaining a drooping cause, and had glided, 
with his fourteen children, into a pew in the parish 
church. 

My uncle Fyford felt the compliment, and ac- 
knowledged the step as the removal of a social bar- 
rier. Mr. Babbidge’s family was of respectable 
“ bourgeois ” origin, on the lower ranges of the 
professions, legal and medical. And then the 
whole thing was so conservative ; which was cer- 
tainly a recommendation. It was only for Pa- 
tience to remove from the abbey gatehouse to the 
vicarage. She would not have any unreasonable 
expectations. She would not revolutionize his 
household, or even his cases of Coleoptera. It 
would be so little trouble, and would make so little 
difference, and he was so used to her quiet ways, 


530 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


and her quiet soft voice, that, on the whole, he 
easily glided into feeling it the most natural se- 
quence. In short, he soon began to be of Dick’s 
opinion that “ Providence ” must have designed it 
from the beginning. And so Dick, at Patience’s 
request, was to be changed into Bichard ; and we 
were to have a triple wedding. 

How different the course of true love had been 
in each case ; and yet in each, in its measure true ! 

With Dick, secure anchorage of a home, shel- 
tered and safe in England, to which his heart 
might turn and rest, however he might be tossed 
and knocked about, for the old country, by storms 
or broadsides abroad. 

To Piers and Claire the quiet ripening and ful- 
filling of the long love of earliest years. 

With Amice the raising and glorifying of every 
faculty and capacity of her rich nature to its high- 
est power. The discovery of a new world, the 
creation of a new life, almost of a new self. I had 
long since come to rejoice for her, and in her, with 
my whole heart and soul. Who could help it, 
loving her half as well as I did, seeing now she 
grew to be all her dear, noble self, in the sunshine 
of that great ennobling love ; how the new light 
and life penetrated to every inmost depth, and 
every uttermost blossom of her being ? 

So the triple wedding came to pass. 

In those days, Abbot’s Weir had not blossomed 
into aesthetics, social or ecclesiastical. Bridal veils 
and orange-flowers had not penetrated to our re- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


531 


mote regions. Bridesmaids were in this instance 
a difficulty ; I being the only one of our immedi- 
ate circle left unmarried. However, fortunately, 

. the requirements of the age were not so severe as 
to the multiplicity of assistants then as now. I did 
duty for Claire and Amice, and two of Patience’s 
sisters for herself ; and Uncle Fvford married the 
three couples quite securely without assistance. 

But we thought it all very complete and fes- 
tive. The sweetness and beauty of the brides 
made festival enough for us, as we sat at break- 
fast on the vicarage lawn ; the queenly majesty 
of Amice’s movements, and the southern splen- 
dor of her radiant face contrasting with the grace 
and graciousness of our Claire, and the sweet 
English freshness of Patience. 

And the landscape was fair enough to set our 
jewels. The sunny vicarage lawn, the old-fash- 
ioned garden, the picturesque ruins of the Abbey, 
around and beyond ; for a background, the river 
sweeping along the meadows beneath the wooded 
hills, and the grey, old, familiar Tors; and for 
human surroundings, the children of the Sunday- 
■ school at the feast Amice had provided them in 
the old Abbey still-house, where we had taught 
them together for so many years, Beuben and 
Chloe being master and mistress of the ceremo- 
nies. 

It was certainly not a wedding without tears. 
To me, if I dared to think of it (which I did 
not), this beginning was an ending of so much ! 


532 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Different as the course and the character of 
the love which united them to each other, was 
the course of the life before them. 

To Cousin Dick and Patience, as Uncle F y- 
ford had said, in outward scene and circumstance 
little change. 

But to Amice and Claire how much ! 

Piers and Claire were to live, at first at least, 
in the old Manor Farm, belonging to my father’s 
family ; one of the many small manor houses 
then existing in our neighborhood. In its earli- 
est stage, centuries ago, it had doubtless been a 
stately dwelling compared with the rough cottages 
of the laborers round it. And to this day an 
air of good birth and breeding lingered around 
it. There was a paved court in front, entered 
by an arched gateway ; and a sunny terrace at 
the side, sloping to one of the countless musical 
brooks which run among our hills, with beehives 
on it, and borders of thyme and sweet maijoram 
and roses and pansies. And within were a hall, 
with a long mullioned window, and a wainscotted 
parlor with armorial bearings carved over the 
large fireplace, and a broad oak staircase with ' 
bannisters adorned with carvings of nondescript 
heraldic creatures, beaked and clawed. And all 
around its steep roofs and fine old clustered chim- 
neys, a sheltering phalanx of fine old trees, which 
threw deep shadows athwart the courts and ga- 
bles and sunny slopes, and made morning and 
evening musical with the cawings of a pre-histor- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


'533 


ical tribe of rooks, which no doubt looked down 
a little in a kindly and protective way on us 
Danescombes as “ quite a new family.’’ 

A pleasant place it was for Claire to make fair 
with flowers and fresh draperies, and above all 
with her own fresh grace ; to watch her husband 
ride from in the morning over the green mead- 
ows, and to welcome him to in the evening, 
with some new discovery or invention of home- 
delight. 

And so life began for Claire and Piers as a 
delicious pastoral, sunny and pure and calm, shed- 
ding the light of its own lustre unconsciously 
around ; while Amice and Herve Godefroy were 
bent on pilgrimage, literally and mystically, over 
unknown seas to unfamiliar shores, through un- 
tried difficulties to duties as yet dimly perceived. 
Around them no scenery of sunny pastoral, but 
storm and battle and peril, to test and develop 
all that was deepest and highest in them both. 
No fair golden setting of circumstance around 
their love. They had only the love itself, the 
precious stone itself, with all its depth of light 
and mystic meaning ; only each other , as a shield 
for each other against the world, as a shield to- 
gether for the sufferers of the world. 

Yet certainly they did not feel their lot the 
poorest. 

Nor did I. 



CHAPTER XXXYI. 

OYEDAY and I were thus, in a sense, 
left alone, of all the happy circle of my 
childhood. 

Loveday had always seemed as young 
as any of us; and now I felt certainly as old as 
she was, not at all regretfully or gloomily, but a3 
if set in a little skiff which had reached a calm 
creek ; in a sense, outside the current of life, yet 
not by any means stranded or anchored, but ready 
at any moment, at any call, to be in the mid-cur- 
rent to succor any one there. Loveday’s skiff had 
been a life-boat to many. Better I could not wish 
for mine. 

And yet, and yet — there was a silence in the 
familiar old terraced garden, on the Leas and by 
the Leat, and in the empty rooms of the dear up- 
and-down old house. What was the use of listen- 
ing to the silence, or of filling it with tears ? — of 
being left behind, or of looking only backwards ? 

As Amice had said years before, when Piers 
went first to Mr. Rabbidge’s school, “ Then don't 
be left behind ” 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


535 


I would not. Loveday never had been. We 
would press forward, Loveday and I, together. 
By the way, we should find not a few “ hands 
that hang down ” to lift up. Mine should not be 
hands that hang down, but hands that lift the bur- 
dens of others up. So help me God. 

After all, there was double work to do in many 
ways ; and if double work with half-power is de- 
pressing to look at, it is inspiring to do. The half- 
power grows to double power, by trying, when the 
work is given us ; and the breath cannot be spent 
in sighing when all is wanted for the race. 

Our cousin Dick had to leave home soon after 
his marriage ; and he commended Patience espe- 
cially to my cousinly and “ grandmotherly” care, 
which she needed, having had her strength over- 
strained too early by the struggle to make poverty 
press as lightly as possible on her father and the 
fourteen, who continued to appeal to her as of 
old. 

And one great gain came to me out of the 
many gains to others which were in an external 
sense at first loss to me. My father and I became 
closer companions than ever. Piers was with him 
by day, but the mornings and evenings were 
mine ; often entirely mine, Mrs. Danescombe be- 
ing not seldom absent on visits to Francis and his 
wife. Together we walked through the woods 
and meadows, or rode among the breezy moors 
and Tors. And together we roamed over our mar- 
vellous English literature, past and present, rest- 


536 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ing in its sunny pastures, and scaling its far-seeing 
heights ; resting ourselves with his beloved Cow- 
per, in his Winter Walks by the Ouse, or in his 
Winter Evenings by the Fireside ; or led by Shak- 
speare through the length, and breadth, and 
heights and depths of human character and human 
life. Occasionally also new voices came to us, 
comparatively feeble then, and not at their full 
force, — yet (my father thought) not without some- 
thing of the old tire and timbre in them, — in the 
early poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Our 
father never made a barrier of the past to block 
out his vision into the present. And so one of 
the best of all friendships grew up for me — the 
friendship between a father and a daughter ; pre- 
serving youth for the child, restoring youth to the 
parent ; enriching the young with the wealth of the 
recollected past, inspiring the aged with the life of 
the future which is to expand it ; and hallowing all, 
— the friendship, the memories, the hopes, — with 
the tenderness of sacred instinctive affection. Often 
I felt that all my loss elsewhere was made up to 
me by the gain here. Often I thanked God that 
I had learned to estimate this treasure before it 
was too late. 

In politics it was not a cheerful time. 

It seemed to my father a long descent from the 
rule of Pitt, of the one man of genius, to the min- 
istry of “ All the Talents” which succeeded him. 
FTor did he share Charles Fox’s sanguine hopes of 
peace with the Emperor Napoleon. He could 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


537 


never comprehend how any one could trust the 
man whose bulletins were one series of rhetorical 
lies, who had crushed all true liberty in France, 
betrayed Venice, and trampled on Switzerland; 
who had caused the guiltless Duke d’Enghein to 
be asassinated at midnight in the ditch at Vincen- 
nes, and the noble German bookseller Palm, in 
open day, near Nuremberg for refusing to give up 
the name of the author of a patriotic pamphlet ; 
who hated England with the hatred of an impe- 
rious will baffled, and a successful conspirator un- 
masked, hated her as he hated freedom, and patri- 
otism, and genius, and goodness ; as he hated Mad- 
ame de Stael, Queen Louisa of Prussia, and the 
noblest of the Republican soldiers ; as he hated all 
that were too great or too true to fall at his feet 
and worship him, with a hatred which hesitated at 
no weapons, from the slander of a womanish spite, 
to midnight assassination, or the slaughter of thou- 
sands. 

For England to make peace with such an 
enemy, seemed to my father, to betray weaker 
nations, and her own noblest reason of existence ; 
to sacrifice the reality of patriotism to the theories 
of liberalism. It was one of the cases, he thought, 
not unfrequent, in which heart and genius saw alike, 
— the heart of the nation and the genius of her 
greatest — and saw truer than prudence and talent, 
— the prudence of the subtlest policy, and the abil- 
ity of “ All the Talents.” 

Grievous it was therefore to him to hear of 


538 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


negotiations going on with M. Talleyrand through 
all the summer of 1806, from spring till autumn, 
while Napoleon was using the time in bringing 
nation after nation into submission ; “ submission,” 
which, as Lord Howick said, “ never stopped his 
progress.” 

His only consolation was to turn to the other 
of the two objects which it was said Charles Fox 
had set his heart on carrying — to the long parlia- 
mentary warfare against the slave-trade opened by 
the first Quaker petition in 1783. 

On June 10, 1806, Charles Fox himself, as 
Prime Minister, moved — “ That this House, con- 
sidering the slave-trade to be contrary to the prin- 
ciples of justice, humanity, and policy, will with 
all practicable expedition take effectual measures for 
its abolition.” “ His own life was precarious,” he 
said, “ if he omitted this opportunity of saving the 
injured Africans he might have no other opportu- 
nity ; and under the circumstances he dared not 
neglect so great a duty.” “ If he should succeed 
in carrying through this measure,” he declared, 
“ he should consider his life well spent, and should 
retire satisfied that he had not lived in vain.” 

Too soon was the precariousness of the life, and 
the sacredness of that opportunity proved. It was 
indeed his last. That eloquent voice was no more 
to be heard in Parliament. His health failed al- 
most immediately after that motion was carried by 
a majority of 114 to 15 in the Commons, and by 
41 to 20 in the House of Lords. 


A0A1SST THE STREAM. 


539 


Within three months, Charles Fox was laid 
close beside William Pitt, in the north transept of 
Westminster Abbey. 

“The giants are dead,” it was said; “ we who 
have seen them know. We have come to the 
lesser race.” 

Another of her great sons had been sacrificed 
to his work for England. The negotiations for 
peace with France, from which Charles Fox had 
hoped so much, had failed. Care and failure had 
told heavily on his already weakened frame. But 
“ even when removed by pain and sickness from 
the discussion of political subjects,” Mr. Clarkson 
wrote, “he never forgot the anti-slavery cause. 
i Two things,’ he said, on his deathbed, ‘ I wish 
earnestly to see accomplished — peace with Europe, 
and the abolition of the slave trade. But of the 
two I wish the latter?” 

The last and best was granted ; and the hope 
of it was permitted to dawn on his dying eyes. 
Again and again, as disease made progress, he 
spoke of it. Indeed, as Lord Ho wick said in 
the House of Commons, “ the very hope of the 
abolition quivered on his lips in his last hours.” 

Debates followed in both Houses, sometimes 
prolonged till the dawn ; until at last on Wednes- 
day, the 25th of March, 1807, Lord Granville’s 
ministry ennobled itself, and England, by obtain- 
ing the royal assent to the abolition of the slave- 
trade, in the very last hour of its existence, when 


540 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


his Majesty had demanded the resignation of office 
rather than yield Catholic emancipation. 

It was decreed that no slave should be landed 
in the British colonies after March 1st, 1808. 

That was a day of pure and exalted triumph at 
Clapham. Whatever jealousies there might sub- 
sequently be among the narrators of the fight, to 
those who fought it, success was incomparably 
dearer than fame, and the success of May 22 was 
the glory of each, and the joy of all. 

Twenty years before, in 1787, the first meeting 
of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave 
Trade had been held, by twelve men, mostly mer- 
chants, all but two Quakers : at their head Gran- 
ville Sharpe, who had struck the first blow in res- 
cuing Jonathan Strong twenty years earlier yet, in 
1767 ; — among them Thomas Clarkson, who of all 
the advocates approached the nearest to the mar- 
tyr’s crown, having again and again risked his 
life in hunting out, through riotous taverns, and on 
stormy seas, the evidence which convinced the na- 
tion and the Parliament. 

For forty years they had carried the contest 
on ; — their first victory the decision wrung from 
Lord Mansfield, that no slavery was possible on 
English soil. 

During those forty years, the monarchy of 
France had perished; the French Kepublic had 
fallen before the Empire ; all Europe, all freedom 
and national life were falling before Bonaparte 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


541 


and the terrible instrument of destruction he had 
created out of prostrate France. 

Three times invasion had threatened our 
shores. Our navy had saved us, but had lost its 
greatest commander. Two of our greatest minis- 
ters had died, Worn out with the combat with Bo- 
naparte. 

But steadily, undistracted by perils they felt as 
keenly as any, or by the ruins of fallen dynasties 
and falling nations, and undismayed by defeat and 
calumny, Wilberforce and Clarkson, and those 
who worked with them, had pursued their great 
purpose of rescuing a race. 

And at last the midday sun of Wednesday, 
March 25, 1807, shone on their victory. 

Clapham went to the ends of the earth for met- 
aphors magnificent enough to express the joy. 
My cousins wrote me that Mr. Wilberforce had 
been compared to “ Manco Capac, the child of ‘the 
sun, descended on earth in pity to human suffer- 
ing.” 

A medal was struck, with the head of Mr. 
Wilberforce the “ Friend of Africa ” on one side, 
and on the reverse, a number of Pagan allegorical 
personages, with wreaths, ACsculapian serpents, 
and shields, one of these personages being crowned 
by a winged being from a cloud, carrying a cross ; 
encircled by the motto which, breaking through 
the cold haze of allegory, goes straight and warm 
to the heart — “ 1 have heard their cry.” And bet- 
ter than all, through the shouts of victory were 


542 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


heard the threatening murmurs of a war which 
was to lead to greater victory yet. 

Lord Percy spoke of the abolition, not only of 
the slave trade, but of slavery ; and Sheridan 
dared to say in the House that the abolition of the 
slave trade was but a prelude to the emancipation 
of the slaves. 

The planters, and all those interested in main- 
taining slavery, (like the Dames at Abbot’s Weir 
— and like the Pharisees), had indeed seen, from 
the first, whither the conflict was tending, better 
than many of those who began it. 

It was a daily delight to carry every detail of 
the debates to Loveday, as she lay, now no longer 
on the little couch, but on her bed, placed as near 
the window as might be, that she might see the 
birds which came to the window-sill for crumbs, 
and the children playing in the empty market- 
place. Sometimes I thought her very peace and 
joy must keep her alive. 

“Wish it, only wish it enough , Loveday ! ” I 
said to her one day, “ and you will live to the 
next victory as you have lived to this.” 

On the morning when I told her the king’s 
consent had been given, she yielded to a pas- 
sionate emotion, rare indeed for her. She wept 
and sobbed for joy. And then she broke into 
ritual observance. 

“ Bride, “ she said, ” I cannot stay in bed to- 
day ; I must dress, and, dear, you will place the 
couch in the front window in the dear old school- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


543 


room ; and Piers and Mr. Danescombe will come 
and lift me to it. And I shall see the children all 
together again.” 

She meant not so much again, as “ once more,” 
only once more. But she would not pain me by 
saying so. 

Miss Felicity considered it a craze, but she 
made no resistance. 

And that afternoon Claire and I had our 
Loveday once more oh the little couch where 
she had taught me my “ heroes,” to say to Miss 
Felicity, on the first day that Claire kissed me 
with the fool's cap on. 

In the close white cap and the soft grey unrust- 
ling dress, and all her cloud of white and dove- 
color, with a faint rosy flush on her pale face, 
like a cloud at earliest dawn. 

There she lay like a crowned queen, while all 
the children came to her one by one, and from a 
little basket by her side she gave each some little 
token ; for the girls, pincushions and needlecases, 
and knitted mittens and housewife, made out of 
bits of the old dove-colored dresses ; and for the 
boys, knives and little seals and pencils, which she 
must have ransacked her scanty childish stores 
to furnish ; for, money she always considered she 
had none that was not due to her father and Miss 
Felicity. 

She had some kind little saying for every one, 
and she begged them all to keep the things as 
keepsakes for her, and as tokens that the poor Af- 


544 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


rican mothers and fathers and little children 
were not to be stolen from their homes again any 
more, forever. And then she kissed them all. 

The children were pleased, but very subdued. 
I think they looked on it as some religious festival, 
which indeed it was, and felt the kiss something 
sacramental. 

And then, when the gifts were given, she said, 
not in entreaty, but with a gentle easy authority, 
as of one accustomed to command, — 

“ Aunt Felicity, I want them all to have a 
holiday this afternoon, that they may remember 
the day.” 

And Miss Felicity made no difficulty or demur, 
strict as her regulations about holidays were ; none- 
having ever been granted by her before within the 
memory of Abbot’s Weir, for causes less historical 
than the Day of the martyrdom of the blessed 
King Charles I. — to the confusion of the Jaco- 
bins, — or the day of the “ happy deliverance of 
King James I. and the Three Estates of England, 
from the most treacherous and bloody-intended 
massacre by gunpowder” — to thfc confusion of the 
I Papists. 

Every one felt that this was Loveday’s fete ; 
like a birthday, a wedding, or a coronation. 

And so the children went away ; but their sub- 
dued demeanor, which usually ended with the sup- 
posed range of Miss Felicity’s inspection, lasted 
further that day. 

The little ones went quietly all the way to their 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


545 


homes, to the surprise of their parents ; as if it 
had been Sunday. 

And we, Piers and Claire and my father and 
I, spent the afternoon with her also, as if it 
had been Sunday ; one of George Herbert’s 
Sundays. 

“ Day most calm, most bright, 

The fruit of this ; the next world’s bud, 

The indorsement of supreme delight ; 

a day on which 

“ Heaven’s gate stands ope,” 

as indeed it seemed to stand to us that day, seeing 
the light shine through it on Loveday’s radiant 
face and feeling her so near the entering in. 

It was indeed her last day among us all. It 
seemed like a receiving the Yiatican together. 

And after that, I felt the journey had to be 
taken, and we must let her go. 

Something about the day having been like Sun- 
day I said to her when we had lifted her to her 
bedroom again, and I was leaving her for the 
night. 

“ Like Sunday ? Yes,” she said, “ but not a 
Sabbath ; not a close. Hot a seventh day, but a 
first day of the week. A beginning. The victory 
which made it a festival is only the first victory 
of the campaign. The warfare has to go on, and 
you will all help to carry it on. And we also,” 
she said with a solemn joy, “ if we are with Him 
who is conquering and to conquer, — nearer Him 
35 


546 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


than we can be here— we, I think, surely may 
help, not less.” 

She said few of what are usually called last 
words. Her words had all been spoken on the 
shores of the eternal sea, whose murmurs make 
last words so sacred, in the Presence which makes 
that sea but as the Sea of Galilee on that calm 
morning when the risen Master waited there to 
welcome the disciple to the shore. 

She never spoke of closing and ending, or re- 
pose, or death ; but of continuance, and beginning, 
and service, and life. 

“ ‘ Going to rest ? ’ ” she said. “ Yes ! such 
rest as is possible to love ; the rest of Michael the 
Archangel, the rest of Him who was ‘ persecuted ’ 
in His Stephen, and whose strength was made 
perfect in the weakness in His Paul. ‘ Sleep ; ’ 
yes, the sleep of those who ‘rest not day nor 
night.’ All that need sleep to be left behind in 
‘ the sleeping place.’ And we , for us } waking, 
serving, seeing , with eyes that can bear to see 
‘ face to face.’ ” 

“ I hope I have been learning a little,” she 
said. “ And now I shall begin to use what I Have 
learned. Hot, indeed, ‘ ten talents ’ or ‘ ten cities,’ 
Bride; but perhaps some little village, some little 
corner of the worlds, to help.” 

“ "Why not this corner ? ” I said ; “ dear Love- 
day. Why not usf ” 

“ I should like it best of all,” she said, with 
her child-like smile. “And we shall be near 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


547 


enough to ask Him. And He knows and cares 
without our asking. But He will do the very 
best, here and there, for us all. Here, if we will 
let Him choose; and there we shall delight for 
Him to choose.” 

One morning, when I came, she was holding 
in her feeble hands a letter from Amice. She 
gave it to me to read, and watched me earnestly 
as I glanced through it. 

And as long as her cough gave her an inter- 
mission she entered into every detail of Amice’s 
letter, which was very bright, though not remark- 
ably sanguine. 

“ I write to thee first, our Loveday,” Amice 
wrote, “ because I am in thy country, among thy 
people. Dear, they are not as delightful as thyself. 
They are not exactly the aristocracy of the races. 
I am afraid they have not yet reached a region 
where they can be ruled without rewards and pun- 
ishments. And I am afraid the reward most of 
them like best is repose in the crudest sense of 
doing nothing. A Paradise of lying still in the 
sunshine, and occasional singing and dancing, with 
a good deal of sugar, sensuous and spiritual, would 
satisfy them. 

“ In tastes, intellectual and physical, we cannot 
imagine how to meet them. The things we like 
would be a burden to them. The things they 
like would certainly not be delights to us. 

“ But then there is the heart ; that in us all 


548 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


which loves ; that is, our inmost selves. And this, 
of course, we cannot pounce on in a moment. 

“ Poor dear, blundering, imitative children ; 
children with the passions of middle age, and the 
cunning of hunted old age. 

“ On one of the estates they wished to get up a 
Sunday service in emulation of the white men, 
and for their Liturgy, recited in solemn measured 
accents, with responses, ‘ This is the house that 
Jack built.' 

“ Sometimes 1 am afraid the sacred words in 
our real worship may, in their ignorance, be to 
some of them little better. 

“ Indeed, for that matter, we are nearer such 
absurdities than we think, all of us, when we make 
our devotions in any degree a repetition of charms, 
instead of a communion of heart or a lifting up of 
the soul. It is so difficult to know when they un- 
derstand, and when they only catch the words and 
tones, and copy, like clever, timid children. 

tc Yet, here again, there is'the heart in common. 
That they can love, and sacrifice all for love, is true. 
*' They may shoot me dead, or do with me what 
they please,’ one of them said, 4 if they only do no 
harm to our teachers.’ 

“ And some of them, I am sure, have learned 
from the Moravians, of a pitying, loving, suffering 
dying Saviour, to please whom they will be pa- 
tient and honest (and which seems to me a miracle 
of grace), will work industriously for masters who 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


549 


liave no more right to their service than a thief to 
a stolen purse. 

“ Also, we are beginning to discriminate, to see 
differences among them in character and in race 
and training. We have a few men of quite higher 
races ; one Mohammedan, who can read Arabic. 

“ But the grand difficulty is the slavery itself? 
soften it as one can. 

“ Often Burke’s words occur to me, ‘Nothing 
makes a happy slave but a degraded man? I feel 
the wrong and injustice press on us so heavily, 
now that we are close to it, that sometime we think 
(tell Bride and Piers) there is no real remedy but 
the one Piers propounded at Miss Felicity’s years 
ago, when I told him, for his pains, he was a very 
little boy and knew nothing of what he was talk- 
ing about ; namely, to set them free at once. 

£ ‘ To train people to be men by keeping them 
children, to train people to be free except by mak- 
ing them free, by letting them bear the conse- 
quences of their sins and mistakes, seems to me 
more and more an impossibility. 

“ What does the whole history of the world 
mean but that it is an impossibility, even to God f 

“ We have found that Mr. David Barclay, one 
of your community, as no doubt you know, did 
emancipate thirty slaves in Jamaica about ten 
years since ; but he could not do it in the island. 
He had to transport them to Philadelphia, and 
there apprentice them to trades. It answered in 


550 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


almost all cases ; but the coldness of the climate 
of Pennsylvania was a difficulty. 

“ Meantime Christianity can raise and does 
raise some even of these slaves. ‘ If the Son 
makes any one free, he is free indeed.’ 

a Only it seems to me more difficult for own- 
ers to do missionary work than for others ; espe- 
cially for owners who feel slavery a great wrong. 

“ I want to be down among them poor and 
toiling and suffering ; and we cannot. 

“ We cannot ; oh, Loveday. How can I ? when 
God has made me rich with every kind of riches, 
and above all, with such unutterable treasures of 
love and joy ? ” 

“ How good of God ,’ 5 Loveday murmured, as 
I laid the letter down beside her, “ to let me know 
even that ! And yet how foolish ! 55 she added. 
“ As if we should be blind and deaf and forgetful 
there. Blind in His light ! Deaf with His voice, 
forgetful in His Presence, who careth for the 
sparrows, to whom one of us is ‘ more than many 
sparrows . 5 Oh, Bride, how I love those words ! 
There seems to me a smile in them, like a mother 
with playful tenderness reassuring a weeping 
frightened child . 55 

And then came an interval of breathlessness 
and pain ; and she could say no more. 

“ Amice has crossed her sea, and begun her 
new life before I have , 55 she said, when it was over. 

“ But oh, Loveday , 55 I said, “ no letters, no 
message, no sound across that sea ! 55 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


551 


“ Not from that side,” she said. Only one Voice 
audible to mortal ears. Go and tell my brethren 
that 1 am risen and go before them] w^from that 
side. And. it is enough. But messages from this 
side , who knows how constantly ? And we are to 
be with Him whom those messages reach, with 
Him to whom here we pray.” 

“ No,” I said ; “ the blindness, dimness, deaf- 
ness, can be only here ! But oh, Loveday, say — 
promise, prophecy — that you will not forget or 
change ! ” 

“Did you make Amice promise?” she said, 
stroking my face as I bent over her. “ Life 
changes us more than death; more than living 
with Him who changes not. With Him we shall be 
more ourselves, not less. All ourselves, our true 
selves, perfected ; knowing more, hoping more, 
loving more. My dear, love in heaven must be 
deeper than love on earth. No love in idleness, 
no mere delicious leisures its chief rewards ; but 
caring, giving, helping, serving, giving itself. 
Loving more than here ! My darling,” she con- 
cluded, “ who hast been so true to me, so much to 
me so long, it seems difficult to think so. Yet it 
must be true. With Him who loves best. Loving 
even more than now. Although it seems difficult 
to think so. Loving more.” 

And after that I know not that she said much. 

It came to nursing night and day. Many of 
those she had taught entreated to be allowed to 
help. Her sick bed was supplied with the best 


552 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


dainties the little town could give, from little 
shops, and from the gardens of the poor, sent with 
apologies in the most delicate way, as to a princess. 
And every morning Claire brought the sweetest 
flowers. Not one service was rendered her that 
was not a service of love. 

And when all the pain was over for her, forever, 
a rare gleam of intelligence and tenderness came 
over her poor father, as he looked on her face for 
the last time, pale and lifeless and full of deep rest, 
with lilies and white roses around her, Claire’s last 
offering. Old memories seemed to wake up 
within him. 

“ My poor child ! Good little Loveday ! She 
was like her poor mother. I did not do all I 
might for either of them. God forgive me.” 
Then turning to Miss Felicity and recurring to the 
habitual shield of “ adverse circumstances ” which 
she threw around him, he concluded, “ But every- 
thing went against me.” 

But Miss Felicity, as she led him away, for 
once forgot the shield, and did not try to comfort 
or excuse him. She knew too well how sure the 
stream is to sweep down those who do not pull 
against it. 

She only said, “ God can forgive us ! He has 
more than made up to her. He can make us a 
little like her, — a little, before we die.” 

The beauty of the patient life had burst on her 
at last, now it was finished. It had then, after all, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


553 


been no poor ruin : but a lovely cherished shrine 
of God. 

But to me all through those sad days, and 
from her grave, beside that of my own mother, her 
words kept echoing back, as if from heaven, — 

* With Him who loves most , Loving more even 
than she loved here below. Although it seems 
difficult to think so. Loving more” 




CHAPTEK XXXVII. 

HE years were come during which Eng- 
land had to pull absolutely alone against 
the stream ; the whole continent swept 
away by the torrent of Bonaparte’s victo- 
ries ; the oldest dynasties following with such ac- 
quiescence as they could assume, in the wake of 
his triumph ; the nations dragged helplessly on, 
not yet aroused. And England herself without 
any leader, on the throne, in the Council, in Parlia- 
ment, by sea. or by land, to whom she gave her 
whole trust ; Nelson, Pitt, and Fox all laid low in 
her defence. 

Yet the spirit of the nation was high and un- 
wavering. The conscience of men had been freed 
from the sense of a great national wrong. The least 
symptom of success to our army was welcomed by 
many, after the abolition of the slave-trade, as a sign 
of Divine approval ; while failure, as at Buenos 
Ayres, was resented as the result merely of the 
incapacity of the leader, and did but increase the 
sturdy determination of the people not to give in. 

Meantime Europe seemed falling deeper and 



AGAINST THE STREAM. 


555 


deeper. On the 14th of October, 1806, Prussia 
touched her depth of humiliation at Jena. In 
November Bonaparte had entered Berlin in tri- 
umph. Happily for Prussia and for her kings, at 
the last, they fought, and fell with the nation, and 
were honorably identified with her sufferings. 
While dismembering the kingdom, Bonaparte 
circulated calumnies against the noble Queen, - 
and stooped to call the king “ General Bruns- 
wick.” Prussia and her royal race were in the 
dust together; and from the dust together they 
arose. 

But as yet not a promise nor a stir of rising 
life was visible. 

From Berlin Napoleon had issued, in Novem- 
ber, 1806, the famous “ Decrees,” making all Eng- 
lish commerce contraband. 

In April, 1807, after his victory of Friedland, 
Napoleon met the Czar Alexander in the richly 
canopied tent on the raft on the river Niemen, and 
concluded the Treaty of Tilsit. 

North and south, east and west, on all the 
dreary horizon, not a power seemed to lift its head 
in opposition, over the fields swept level by trium- 
phant armies ; kings were acquiescent, and nations 
prostrate. Sweden, our one ally at that moment, 
under the young king so soon to be dethroned, 
seemed scarcely a Power, and scarcely within the 
European horizon. Bonaparte’s brothers were on 
the thrones of Naples, Holland and Westphalia, 
and one was soon to be on the throne of Spain ; 


556 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


while his generals were transferred to those of 
Naples and of Sweden. 

Yet, hopeless as everything looked, national 
life was not extinct. 

It is good now to recall the thrill of delight 
with which the first symptom of the rekindling life 
was welcomed throughout England. 

England had seemed the only living nation left 
in the world, the only people that at the touch of 
the French armies and the word of the Conqueror 
would not crumble into atoms. Was there such a 
thing, some might question, as national life at all ? 
Was not human society after all a mere nebula of 
disconnected atoms, in perpetual oscillation, and 
perfectly indifferent around what centre they 
were grouped, as one attraction or another proved 
the stronger ; the isolation of England being simply 
mechanical and geographical, an affair of a few 
miles of separating sea? Was not the “nation,’’ 
after all, a Platonic dream, as obsolete as any other 
of the “ Universal Ideas,” or any other exploded 
theory of old scholasticism ? the only reality being 
individual existence, and self-interest. 

The answer came from the most unexpected 
side ; from Spain, asleep for centuries under her 
imbecile kings. 

Bonaparte did but attempt with her what else- 
where had been submitted to patiently enough. 
The game seemed safer than usual. There was a 
division in the royal house. One puppet was in- 
triguing against another. What could be easier 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 557 

than to entrap both, betray both, and set a Bona- 
parte on the vacant throne \ 

But then suddenly the great chess-player dis- 
covered that the pieces had life ; kings, queens* 
bishops, knights, pawns; pawns most evidently 
of all, and most unaccountably of all ; w T ere not 
puppets, but men fathers and sons, families, a 
nation. 

From end to end Spain awoke ; awoke, arose, 
lived, palpitated in every limb with life. Simul- 
taneously, not at the summons of any one great 
Leader, but spontaneously, without preparation, 
city after city, province after province, rose, felt 
they were not many but one ; and as one man, re- 
fused to be at the bidding of the man before 
whom all Europe had bowed down. 

The enthusiasm of sympathy throughout Eng- 
land was universal. 

All our England (the England some call prosa- 
ic, with an exceptional Alfred, Shakspeare, Milton, 
Cromwell, Nelson, or William Pitt) ran wild with 
welcome to the “ patriots of Spain.” 

Sonorous Spanish names rang like our own 
great patriotic household names through every so- 
ber little country town in the land. The Maid of 
Saragossa became as much a heroine among us as 
Joan of Arc ought to have been in France. Eng- 
land demanded to spend her treasure and her 
blood in helping this new-born people to freedom. 
The name of freedom had its old magic still among 
us, and knit the countrymen of Drake in brotherly 


558 


AO AIN ST THE STREAM. 


bonds to the old enemies of the Armada. Mr. Wil- 
berforce said in the House of Commons, “that 
every Briton joined in prayer to the Great Buler 
of events to bless with their merited success the 
struggles of a gallant people, in behalf of every- 
thing dear to the Christian, the citizen, and the 
man.” 

We who know what came after that first 
trumpet-call of patriotism and liberty, the strug- 
gles with the incapacity and selfishness of “ patri- 
otic Juntas,” which all but baffled Wellington, and 
all the chaos that has followed, may find it difficult 
to recall the deep and generous response that 
Spanish appeal awoke. 

But into whatever feeble and discordant echoes 
the music fell, it was, nevertheless, in its beginning, 
a true trumpet-call, clear and strong, giving forth 
no uncertain sound. It awoke the nations from a 
sleep of despair into which they never fell again, 
to prepare themselves for the battle. And for any 
nation to have rendered that service to Europe is a 
possibility and a fact never to be forgotten. 

It was in May, 1808, that this voice of patriotic 
resistance reached us from Spain. 

On the 12th of July, Arthur Wellesley sailed 
from Cork for Corunna. 

In August he defeated the French at Yimiero ; 
and the Peninsular War, and the fall of Bonaparte 
had begun. 

Bonaparte had touched the sacred realities of 
human life; and henceforth his warfare was no 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 559 

longer merely with dynasties, but with nations, and 
with men. 

During those years my father woke to new 
hopes for the world. 

He had always looked on Bonaparte as the 
most unmitigated embodiment of the principle of 
selfishness which is the root of human evil that the 
world, or at least Christendom, had seen; the 
devil’s ideal of humanity, “Ye shall be as gods,” 
opposed to the divine, “ I come to do Thy will.” 

And selfishness, evil, could not, he thought, 
create, or even organize. Being a negation of 
light, and heat, and life, it can only detach, divide, 
disorganize, deny, destroy. The nearest approach 
it makes to positive organization is in freezing, 
crystallizing living waters into ice. But the unity 
thus created is only apparent ; ice-seas, ice-bergs, 
ice-blocks, with no power in them save that of ' 
mass and momentum ; power which the petal of a 
flower at the touch of the sun can vanquish. 

Into such ice-blocks Bonaparte had been freez- 
ing the nations ; with such an ice-torrent he had 
been laying them waste, through his Grand Army. 
And now at the awaking of life within the nations, 
the whole frozen fabric was crashing down, or 
melting away. 

He had been able to create nothing. It in- 
censed him that men of genius did not rise at his 
call. He was ready to lavish rewards and decora- 
tions on them. But in the icy atmosphere he had 
spread, no literature could grow. Even the code 


560 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


called by his name was truly, my father said, but 
a modification of the work of the Republic ; the 
literature that did flourish was but the feeble har- 
vest of earlier sowing. The conglomerations of 
people he had forced together into “ kingdoms,” 
did not recognize themselves as corporate bodies ; 
and when the icy hand was withdrawn, they sim- 
ply flowed without effort back into the old chan- 
nels. The one thing which had seemed most like 
a creation, the Grand Army which moved at his 
bidding, and was inspired by his will, which had 
enlarged and compacted year by year, and had 
crushed and desolated Europe, was indeed no or- 
ganization of life to Europe or to France, but only 
a terrible engine of death, soon to recoil on itself. 

And-from the first moment when the nations 
awoke, that engine of destruction, dreadful and 
terrible and strong exceedingly, was doomed. 

Many vicissitudes indeed there were. The pa- 
thetic elegy — 

“ Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,” 

rang like muffled bells throughout England when 
Sir John Moore fell at Corunna. 

Deep was the indignation among us when 
Andrew Hofer was betrayed and shot in the Tyrol ; 
and true was the grief to many of us when the 
young Schill fell in battle, saving Bonaparte from 
the dishonor of executing another patriot as if he 
had been a rebel. 

Many were the reasonable grumblings and 


* AGAINST THE STREAM. 


561 


murmurings among us when the Government lav- 
ished money in sending thousands of Englishmen 
to die of marsh-fever at Walcheren, and withheld 
supplies from Sir Arthur Wellesley. Many also 
were the unreasonable grumblings when Sir 
Arthur Wellesley, after the victory of Talavera, 
retired within the lines of Torres Yedras, refusing 
to risk England and Europe by hurrying before 
popular outcry, as he refused to risk her for any 
niggardliness of cabinets, or cabals of fanatics. 

Those two years between Talavera and Ciudad 
Rodrigo sorely tried the patience and faith of the 
nation. For while they were slowly passing, 
Bonaparte had imposed on Sweden one of his 
generals as king, while Austria had given the 
Corsican an Archduchess in marriage, and an heir 
had been born to perpetuate the new dynasty ; 
and a deplorable war had broken out with Amer- 
ica, to my father the darkest and most unnatural 
of conflicts. 

Yet there was a feeling of hope through the 
nation, the indescribable sense of vitality and 
growth which distinguishes the dullest spring day 
from the finest day in autumn. 

One hero was among us again, who never lost 
hope. 

Sir Arthur Wellesley, behind the lines of 
Torres Yedras, persisted that Bonaparte’s empire 
was undermined : and that England had only to 
hold her own, and keep hope alive in the penin- 
sula a little longer, and the crash would come. 

36 


562 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


Meantime, in onr silence and isolation at home, 
there was anything but silence or lifelessness. 

In 1811 the first steamboat was launched on 
the Clyde. The great Steam Power had made 
another conquest. 

In the same year the anti-slavery cause gained 
another victory by the passing of Lord Brough- 
am’s Bill, constituting slave-trading Felony. 

And throughout the land sounded a chorus of 
new poetic voices. Bonaparte could create no lit- 
erature in France. But Freedom, and the conflict 
with the oppressor, awoke a fresh burst of poetry 
and art in England. 

Once more, as in the days of Luther, English 
thought drank from the old kindred Teutonic 
sources (once more themselves issuing afresh into 
the light), giving and receiving, as is natural and 
due between races so one and yet so diverse. 

Scott and Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Southey, Keats, Shelley, began to be heard among 
us. And Flaxman was there for the sculpture of 
our heroes and singers : now that we had again he- 
roes and poets to celebrate. 

It was an era of new life ; although the pow- 
ers of death and darkness, storm and whirlwind, 
were still mighty in the world. As of old, in all 
our northern spring- tides, the hammer of Thor the 
Thunderer wakened the earth to song. 

And meanwhile, in our little world of Abbot’s 
Weir, life and death were at work. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


563 


The feet of little children pattered about the 
old rooms at Danescombe Manor, and merry little 
voices echoed among the old trees. The garden 
terraces of the old house in Abbot’s Weir, the 
Dropping Well and the Aladdin’s' “ Subterranean 
Passage,” became scenes of hopes and delights to 
a new generation. 

Little cousins came to join them, also, from the 
Vicarage. Once more little motherless children 
played on the slopes, and along the Leas and Leat. 
Por during our cousin Dick’s absence with the 
fleet, Patience, his young wife, had died, leaving 
a twin boy and girl. The strain of motherly care, 
coming on her so early, had been too much for her 
tender and anxious nature, and she passed away, 
leaving the great blank such gentle, devoted lives 
must leave. 

Eager, eloquent, questioning voices may soon 
be replaced. It is the quiet answering voices, 
scarcely heard except in response, in careful coun- 
sel, or in gentle decision, which leave the terrible 
void of silence. 

She lived until the baptism of her babes. 
Piers and Claire and I were sponsors. I had al- 
ways been drawn closely to her ; and she had for 
me that strange strong affection which so often si- 
lently possesses natures that have little power of 
utterance. 

Horatio, the boy, was called after his father’s 
hero ; and for the baby girl the mother would 
have her own name joined with mine. 


564 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


a Yon will love the little ones, and they will 
love you,” she said, “ Bride, Cousin Bride ! ” 

I did indeed love them. Who could have 
helped it, having a “grandmotherly” heart like 
mine ? Dick was smitten to the dust by the loss of 
his wife’s deep, quiet affection, and was only to be 
comforted by continual minute details about her 
babies. 

And so it happened that their home was almost 
as much with us as with Uncle Fyford, to whom 
the babies were naturally a considerable perplex- 
ity. 

Mrs. Danescombe was more patient with these 
little ones than she had been with us. 

Indeed, she seemed more dependent and more 
sympathetic in many ways than of old. 

The love for her Francis, w r hich seemed first to 
have awakened her heart to the joy of loving, 
brought to her further teaching through the bur- 
dens and sorrows, and even the disappointments of 
love. 

Mrs. Dionysia was not at all a person meekly 
to take the second place. And my stepmother, 
when she returned from her visits to Francis, 
seemed to me to cling increasingly to us, and to 
accept our attention and deference with a gratitude 
very different from her old way of taking every- 
thing as a matter of course. 

Moreover these visits became rarer, as Francis 
became established as a popular preacher in a fash- 
ionable watering-place, where his exquisite man- 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


565 


ners and rounded periods made a great impression ; 
and as Mrs. Francis left lier village origin farther 
and farther behind, while her father’s death left 
her joint-heiress of his not inconsiderable accumu- 
lation of savings. 

Mrs. Danescombe never blamed them. She 
had too long been used to throw a veil over 
Francis’ failings, to hide them from others ; and 
now it touched me to see how she tried to transfer 
the veil, so as to hide what she could not bear to 
see, from herself. 

Francis’ family increased ; the spare room in 
the house diminished. The grandmother’s visits 
became limited to an annual one, and this again had 
to be limited in extent. There was only one small 
room, — Francis’ dressing-room — when his mother 
was not there. Of course Mrs. Danescombe was 
most welcome to it. But she could not but feel 
she was costing them a sacrifice of comfort while 
she stayed. 

And at last, one year, instead of the annual in- 
vitation, came a long apologetic epistle from Fran- 
cis. He and his wife were so distressed ; but they 
had been obliged to make other arrangements in 
the house. One of the children had to sleep in 
the dressing-room. Francis had to content himself 
with a strip of a room on another floor, which re- 
ally Dionysia could not think of asking his mother 
to occupy. They must hope for more space in a 
little time. Dionysia talked of investing part of 
her property in building a house. But for the pres- 


566 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ent with the greatest regret, they were reluctantly 
compelled to deny themselves their annual 
pleasure, etc. 

Mrs. Danescombe gave me the letter to read. 
I felt an indignant flush rise to my cheek, and could 
scarcely restrain myself from warm words of blame. 

But my stepmother said, — 

“ You see they have talked it over, and done 
their best to manage it for me. But they cannot. 
I will make haste and pack up the little presents 
for the children, that they may get them in time.” 

We did not say another word, but I helped her 
to finish and pack the gifts she had been so busy 
preparing, — little knitted socks, warm grand- 
motherly articles of winter clothing, packets of 
manifold many-colored sweetmeats, yclept “ fair- 
ing,” picture books, and some little luxuries Fran- 
cis had been fond of as a child. 

She took it very quietly. But the tears came 
many times into my eyes, as I helped her. And 
when the hamper was filled and carefully corded, 
she sat looking at it a moment, and then said,— 

“ It will please the little ones.” 

And then, with a child-like, helpless look, and 
a quiet, hopeless tone I shall never forget, she 
said, — 

“ They do not want me. Ho one wants me.” 

I tried to comfort her. I said, “ We all wanted 
her — 1 wanted her ; ” which, little as I could ever 
have thought it, began to be really true. 

But she shook her head. 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


567 


Then I went back to the subject of Francis, and 
spoke of the new house, and the room there would 
be sure to be in it for her. She tried to take up 
the hope. 

“ I am afraid I have been too much given to 
interfering and finding fault,” she said, humbly. 
“ Dionysia said so. I tried not to offend her. 
But perhaps I said too much. And she does not 
bear much. She naturally thinks of her own chil- 
dren, as I thought of my Francis. I should have 
remembered better. I suppose I made an idol, 
and am punished.” 

I don’t know what I said then, she touched me 
so to the heart. I blamed myself, and made the 
best of Francis, and said many incoherent things. 
But what I felt in the depth of my heart, and 
ended with was, — 

“ Oh, don’t talk of making idols. God gave 
you a child. And you loved him with your whole 
heart. He was your joy. And that did your 
heart good, and warmed it all through. And now 
your love brings you pain. And that does us 
good, more good than anything ; the suffering of 
love. Idols harden the heart. Your love softens 
your heart. This is not idolatry. Idolatry is self- 
ishness ; worshipping anything or any one for our 
own salces. This that makes you suffer is love. 
God is not punishing you ; He is softening, teach- 
ing, — making you so dear and good ! You love 
and suffer, and yet love on. In what better way, 
in what way more like Himself, can God teach ? ” 


568 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


She did not oppose. She kissed me, and said 
I was kind, but that I must not think Francis 
meant anything unkind. 

“ One day, perhaps, he will love enough to 
suffer,” I ventured to say, “ and then God will 
teach him.” 

“ Not suffer ! ” she said deprecatingly. “ Please 
God, at all events, not much. It is not much he 
has to learn.” 

We did all we could to cheer her, my father 
and I. But the “serpent’s tooth” had penetra- 
ted. 

Many an hour we passed in the old oak parlor, 
such as I had never dreamt we could spend there 
together. I read and chatted to her. She did not 
talk much. Her range of literature was not large. 
Novels hurt her. It was so difficult to iind any 
story of human life which did not grate like a saw 
on that sore heart. In history she had no interest ; 
poetry she felt flimsy. To sermons and religious 
books, I do not think she attended much ; but 
these were what she liked best. The good words 
flowed past her like the murmur of a brook ; while 
she sewed, and knitted, and embroidered, for Fran- 
cis and his children. 

And then came a cold ; the last blow which 
so easily strikes down a frame which has lost any 
strong vital power of resistance. 

She did not very much care to live. She hop- 
ed Dionysia would one day build the new house, 
and they would have room for her. Yet they 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 5.69 

could do without her • that was too plain : and 
that was the unutterable anguish. 

She did not much wish to die. It was not clear 
what heaven could have better for her than Francis 
had been. And even in heaven perhaps Francis 
would not need her. But she hoped Grod would 
be merciful, and pity and forgive her. And so 
life could be lived on there or here. 

I wrote to Francis at the first symptoms of se- 
rious illness, urgently. I thought it would be so 
terrible for him if he did not arrive in time. He 
wrote back very eloquent and affectionate messa- 
ges. But there was to be an Archdeacon’s Visita- 
tion, and he was to preach the sermon. It was an 
opportunity of some importance ; an honor, he was 
sure his mother would be sorry for him to miss. 

I * must write again immediately ; and if the ac- 
counts were not better, he would come by the ear- 
liest coach. 

His poor mother did quite appreciate the ' 
honor. 

“ Tell him on no account to lose it for me,” she 
said. “ He will come as soon as he can afterwards 
I know.” 

I wrote, in contradiction to her wish, urging 
him to give up the Visitation, and come at once. 
But there were no telegraphs and no railways 
in those days. My letter arrived on the eve of 
the Visitation. Dionysia had prepared a consider- 
able entertainment. No one could say what 
might depend on such an occasion, or result from 


570 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


it. He preached the sermon, and started on the 
next morning. 

Mrs. Danescombe did not ask if Francis had 
come. But she asked every evening if the coach 
had arrived. And when she was told that it had, 
and no further news followed, she said nothing 
more; except on the last evening, and then she 
moaned, — 

“ I am weaker to-night and worse. Poor 
Francis, he will be very sorry. 

And then, after an interval, — 

“ Bridget, poor little Bride, you have been 
kind. You have done all you could.” 

And again, — 

“ God so loved the world that He gave His 
only Son. He must have loved very much. It 
must be good to go to Him.” 

And again, in a feeble voice, as if to herself,— 

“ Poor dear Francis! He will be very sorry. 
But you see, he could not help it. He could not 
help it. Give him my dear love, and tell him I 
pray God to bless him, with my last breath.” 

That morning the struggle was over. And we 
trusted she had found how good it is to be with 
God. 

The next evening Francis came. 

He was very much moved. He blamed him- 
self, at first, bitterly. 

Then the old habit returned on him. And he 
began to excuse himself, and to explain to us and 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 5 71 

to himself how impossible it was he could have 
done otherwise. 

But when all was over, and his mother was laid 
in the family vault beside mine, the truer feeling 
came hack. 

“ No one will ever love me as she did,” he said 
to me as we sat alone together in the oak parlor 
— “never again. Would to God I had come the 
day before.” 

His sermon at the Archdeacon’s Visitation was 
a great success. It brought him the presentation 
to an excellent living from the patron, who was 
one of the audience. 

But I believe it brought him a far deeper 
blessing than that. It had brought him, through 
the irrevocable loss, through the unfulfilled duty, 
a sense of irreparable, irremediable ill-return for so 
much irrecoverable love, which pierced at last 
through all his scales and crusts of self-compla- 
cency, and left a sting of remorse and repentance 
within him, wakening the real heart within him to 
the softening discipline of a life-long incurable 
pain. 

There was no more only that smooth, trans- 
formed, respectable, but impenetrable larva of an 
“ outside.” There was, as Piers had always trust- 
ed, and I had so often doubted, a creature, still un- 
developed and feeble, but living and to live immor- 
tally within. 

There was no more only the Pharisee, prodigal 
or respectable, crude or transformed, thanking God 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 




572 


for the fewness and shadowiness of his sins, and 
the efficacy of his repentance, and the success of 
his labors in turning other people from their real 
sinful sins. 

There was the Publican, beating on his breast, 
in many a secret hour of that inward, irremediable 
pain ; feeling great need of forgiveness, and asking 
it ; and hoping that the unquenchable love which 
he had returned so ill, which had forgiven and 
loved to the last, might be matched by another 
Love, as enduring and as forgiving; and that he 
might be suffered one day, when all his popular 
sermons, and all his much-lauded labors were over, 
to follow up the life-long confession, “ Father, I 
have sinned against Thee,” by saying what he 
could now never say on earth, “ Mother, mother, I 
have sinned against thee” and so might creep hum- 
bled and pardoned into some lowly place among 
the redeemed at last. 



■- 




CHAPTEE XXXYIII. 

HE close of the great melodramatic ca- 
reer of Bonaparte was drawing near at 
last ; a close more melodramatic than 
any of his bulletins. Or rather, the 
drama had passed into other hands ; and the melo- 
drama was deepening into true and terrible tra- 
-gedy. 

Wellington, and our little determined British 
army, were no longer crouching in expectation 
behind their defences. They were pressing on 
through Spain ; and day after day the coach 
dashed down the quiet streets of Abbot’s Weir, 
garlanded with laurels for victory after victory — 
Salamanca, Ciudad Eodrigo, Badajos; sonorous 
words rang as in old Eoman days through the 
island; and lastly, the significant prophetic name 
“ Yittoria.” Yittoria ! A great battle won at last 
on the very borders of France, with the French 
armies driven before us. 

“ Mere side scenes,” some might say — mere 
skirmishes outside the great line of battle which, 
in the spring of 1812, had been terribly advancing 



574 : 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


in the far north, and was now more terribly ebb- 
ing. 

Yet it was something to have stood alone as 
England did against that stream, when all the rest 
of the world were swept away before it. It was 
something for Europe, which Europe should scarce- 
ly forget: it was infinitely much for England, 
which England is not likely to forget. 

From March to December that last act of the 
dreadful drama went on ; essentially the last, for 
after it the doom was fixed, and all was scarcely 
more than epilogue, merely the last struggles of 
the dying, the last stroke of the coup de grace . 

In May, four hundred thousand men of the 
Grand Army had crossed the Niemen to crush the 
great barbaric northern empire; in December, 
scarcely twenty thousand baffled, beaten men cross- 
ed the bTiemen again, the Grand Army broken 
and destroyed for ever ; fire and frost sweeping 
it away as if it had been something elemental 
only to be crushed by elemental forces. Hun- 
dreds of thousands dying, one by one, on battle 
fields, in exhausting marches, of hunger, of cold, 
of wounds ; and, among all the dying, it was said, 
scarcely one murmur against the man for whom 
and through whom, in various tortures, and for 
no purpose, they died. The Triumph of Loyalty 
(misplaced as it might be) after all greater than the 
Triumph of Death ; thus reviving for the human 
race capable of so enduring and so sacrificing a 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 575 

hope, out of the very depths of the misery to 
which it was sacrificed. 

“ With Christ instead of Bonaparte, for the 
King of Kings ! ” my father said, “ what might 
our race have done — what may it not yet do V’ 

Yet once again, France responded to the well- 
known call. Bonaparte, baffled and defeated, with 
the loss of nearly half a million, not to be hidden 
by the most grandiloquent bulletins from the 
thousands of homes whence they were missed, yet 
had power to gather two hundred and fifty^ thou- 
sand more to encounter the nations at Leipzig ; 
boys four-fifths of them, reluctant and untrained, 
yet once under the magic of that imperial name and 
command, able to win the day in more than one 
hard-fought fight. 

Nevertheless, the great destructive power of 
Napoleon was broken. 

It was no more a conflict of dynasties, but a 
combat of nations. Never was a truer name 
given to a battle than that of “ Battle of the Na- 
tions” (Volkerschlacht), claimed for Leipzig. 

After his defeat there, Bonaparte knew that 
for him universal empire was over. 

Professors, pastors, parents stirred sons, stu- 
dents, congregations to this war of liberation of 
the fatherland. Ancient history, Bible history, 
ceased to belong only to the past. The old heroic 
stories lived again, and became a source of inspira- 
tion for the defence of all that was sacred in life, or 
all that was more sacred than life. Songs and bal- 


576 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


lads, strong and fresh as at the dawn of history, 
rang from the hearts and lips of the nation. 

In one sense, indeed, Bonaparte had created. 
He had created by destroying. He had renewed 
through death. At Jena, but seven years before, 
he had crushed and broken and dismembered the 
various states of the old Teutonic empire. At 
Leipzig, he found springing from the scattered 
ashes a new, patriotic, living Germany. Out of 
ruin had sprung restoration ; out of states a nation. 
And against nations the destroyer had no power. 

France, indeed, seemed, like the demoniac in 
the Gospels, still not to be able to free herself 
from the awful double personality which had so 
long possessed her. Bewildered, fettered, and 
bleeding, she seemed still to answer at her tyrant’s 
bidding through her reluctant conscripts, “ My 
name is Legion, for we are many.” But even this 
was soon to cease. The terrible delusion was 
becoming disentangled from her being. 

In the South of France, where our Wellington 
with the first army which had proved Bonaparte’s 
not “ Invincible,” was pursuing the retreating 
French troops, paying his way according to the 
bourgeois code of honor of “ the nation of shop- 
keepers ; ” and, as we heard, welcomed by the 
natives of the Garonne districts with indications 
of the old fortresses which our ancestors had once 
held, and with friendly inquiries why we did not 
come back. 

And in April, at Fontainebleau, Bonaparte 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


577 


signed the abdication, leaving, as most us then 
fondly thought, France once more clothed and 
in her right mind, at the feet of her ancient 
kings. 

Then in our England, followed three months 
of rejoicing such as England had seldom seen. 
The very skies seemed to rejoice. The old coun- 
try for a time threw off her veil of clouds, and 
shone and laughed, as the green English land can 
shine and smile through all her sunny uplands, 
and grassy meadows and wooded river slopes, to 
welcome the Allied Powers, and her own victo- 
rious soldiers, and peace. 

Abbot’s Weir was beside itself with delight. 
If England had her Wellington to be borne from 
the sea-coast at Dover, like an ancient hero, on 
the shoulders of the enthusiastic men of Kent ; 
and if London had its three nights of illumination 
and its three weeks of festivity, leading the allied 
powers to think there was no poverty in the 
land, (and also inconceivable plunder in the city) ; 
if the House of Commons rose to receive and 
thank our Duke — for we had now our Duke as 
truly as our King — while he sat loyally to receive 
the homage so fully his due ; if Oxford had her 
Greek and Latin gratulatory speeches ; we also in 
Abbot’s Weir, in our manner, had our festivities, 
to us as imposing and important. 

Had not Abbot’s Weir also her heroic sons to 
welcome ? And foremost of them was our cousin 
Captain Fyford, wounded at Trafalgar, and worn 
37 


578 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


and battered by many a stormy day since on the 
transport service for the Peninsular Army. 

The spirit of old Elizabethan dramatic days 
had come over us, not imitatively, but by the old 
inspiration. We were to have something ap- 
proaching a Masque or Mystery ; although alto- 
gether ignoring any alliance with mediaeval mum- 
meries or papistical pomps. 

There was to be a review of the gallant volun- 
teers, and a sham-fight ; to end in the triumphal 
chairing of our cousin Dick as the representative 
of the British forces, and the banishment of Bona- 
parte, (in the shape of an apothecary of small 
stature and military bearing, great among the 
volunteers, who consented to be victimized for the 
public good,) to an island in the middle of our 
river, designed to represent the Island of Elba. 

It was a day of great festivity ; too really glad 
and natural to be riotous and irregular. The 
country poured itself into the town ; flowers and 
green boughs and garlands and triumphal arches 
embowering the streets and festooning the win- 
dows ; the farmers and laborers with their wives 
and children flocking in on foot through all the 
green and flower-strewed lanes, or in merry groups, 
on pillions, and in wagons; while every house- 
holder in the town kept open house, and tables 
were spread in the streets. 

The review of our volunteers on the Down 
went off in a way to convince us that had Napo- 
leon had his coveted command of the Channel for 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 579 

twelve hours and landed, Abbot’s Weir at least 
would have had little to fear. 

On the Down, nature herself entered like the 
gayest of the revellers into our holiday, lavishing 
the sunshine of her clearest skies, and from the 
golden gardens of furze-blossom filling the fresh 
breezy air with delicate fragrance. 

Captain Fyford having been duly honored in 
the capacity of representative of the British 
Forces, and the military apothecary having been 
safely banished to the Island of Elba, all returned 
to take their share in the feastings and the speech- 
ify ings, and afterwards in the dance in the old 
market-house. And it was still early in the night 
when the entertainments were over, and the 
merry-makers had broken up into various groups, 
large or small, and were scattering through the 
lanes to village and hamlet, and solitary farmsteads 
among the hills. 

All day the children had been with us, keep- 
ing close to me and Claire ; rather awed and 
stilled than excited by this universal holiday, and 
by this mysterious bursting of the whole adult 
population into play. 

Little Horace and Patience especially, the 
motherless twins, being timid children, would 
scarcely let go my hands. They seemed to feel as 
if the world had been turned upside down, and the 
serious part of it had devolved on them. 

Claire and I had thought Patience a little fe- 
verish ; and after the dance she went with me to 


580 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


see if the motherless little ones were sleeping 
peacefully in the old vicarage. 

We went alone together through the church- 
yard where our beloved were sleeping. 

The town was growing hushed and quiet ; only, 
now* and then the voices of the returning country 
people calling to each other, sounded back from 
various distances along the valley and up the hills. 

It was so still, that we could hear the rush of 
the river as we went on towards the vicarage gar- 
den by which it flowed. 

Softly we went up to the children’s nursery ; 
and there we found both the little ones sleeping 
tranquilly in their cots ; and Claire and I tucked 
them up and kissed them, and then went down to- 
gether into the garden. 

“ It was a fancy,” she said, “ but I did not like 
the motherless little ones not to have something 
like a mother’s kiss and care to-night.” 

And we went back through the churchyard. 

We paused together a little by our sacred 
places there. 

“ The mothers, and the motherless ! ” she mur- 
mured. u I cannot bear to feel they are left out. 
Two resting-places. The children are asleep ; and 
there is quiet here.” 

“ But not sleep or dreams, Claire,” I said ; “ the 
real life has begun for them. We watch by the 
sleep of the little ones unseen; and they surely 
watch by us.” 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


581 


“ And yet this life is no dream ! ” she said ; 
that life to her so rich, and full and precious. 

“ (3nly as compared with the waking by-and- 
by,” I said ; “ the life they have been awakened 
to, — my mother and yours; and the mother, of 
those little ones ; and the poor mother whose love 
cost her such anguish ; and Loveday, who used to 
spread her motherly wings over us all.’ 5 

We stood some minutes silent there, while the 
quiet flow of the river grew more and more audi- 
ble. 

And then the old church bells chimed out mid- 
night — the deep silvery tones which sounded from 
far away through the centuries. 

' “ Praise God” they chimed, as on the first 
night of the century. 

Since then how many dear voices, then with us 
“ creatures here below,” had passed among “ the 
heavenly host ! ” 

Yet still it was one choir, and one song, to 
which the old bells set the tune. 

We were turning away, when Piers and Cap- 
tain Fyford came to look for us, and went home 
with us through the silent streets to the old house 
on the market-place. 

And then Captain Fyford made a request 
to me, in broken and doubtful words, which at the 
time seemed strange and scarcely possible to grant ; 
but which I thought of again and again, and at last 
found I could not help granting. 


582 


AGAINST TEE STREAM. 


“ It would make so little difference,” as Uncle 
Fyford had said of his first marriage. 

And yet it has made all the difference to me. 



) 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

O it came about that once more there 
reigned a stepmother and a motherless 
little boy and girl in our old house at 
home. 

And that impressive moral tale which was the 
romance and consolation of my childhood, of how 
I would behave to little children situated as 
Piers and I were, had an opportunity of being 
translated into fact. 

“ So runs the round of life from hour to hour.” 

Yet it is never the same round. The outward 
forms and scenes may be the same ; but the whole 
inward life which makes the real drama varies end- 
lessly. The very sameness constitutes the differ- 
ence. We need never fear monotony in a world 
where God organizes every leaf diversely, and 
creates personalities as individual as Adam’s ; and 
in which circumstance, and sin, and conflict twist 
these into varieties so inconceivable. The type 
endlessly various ; and endlessly diverged from. 

Therefore the morals of those very “ pointed ” 



584 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


tales of my childhood never came precisely into 
play. 

My temptations and my poor stepmother’s from 
within and without, were by no means the same. 

In the first place, my step-children and I began 
by loving each other very dearly ; and if I shrank 
determinedly, as I did, from assuming Patience’s 
rights and titles, and being called ‘‘mother,” it 
mattered comparatively little to them, because it 
so happened that “ Cousin Bride ” had long been 
to them a name expressive of the person who loved 
them best in the world. 

And in the second place, by no compact or 
command or sanction, it nevertheless came to pass 
that I had to submit, in the end, to being called 
“mother.” When or how it began I cannot re- 
call ; but I could not forbid to these first-born 
children the name my own children called me. 

The truth w T ould have been rather violated 
than preserved by my rejecting it, although I often 
tried to show both Horace and Patience that they 
were better off even than my own, having always 
that other sacred and undying love watching over 
them and awaiting them above. 

Our home was not that worst desecration of an 
erection over forgotten graves. It was as a tent 
on the sacred threshold. 

That first gleam of peace which we had all 
celebrated as permanent passed away* War came 
again; and Waterloo and St Helena. 

And the warfare which Loveday had cared for, 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


585 


which, as we believed, she was ever caring for still 
— was carried on to other stages, and through new 
combatants, although many of the veterans lived 
yet to carry on the war. 

Faithfully Clapham did its part in the com- 
bat ; and faithfully the Moravian and Methodist 
missionaries (with our Amice and Herve Godefroy 
among them) did theirs. 

Clapham, with its offshoots and dependencies 
grew richer and more prosperous ; and its gene- 
rosity kept pace with its wealth. 

How could it help growing rich ? 

Being religious makes people prudent and ener- 
getic ; being prudent and energetic, makes people, 
in the main, rich. And if being rich does not 
always help people to remain religious, once more 
from the depths, from the poor, God calls His rich — 
rich in faith: — and strong, through the prayer and 
fasting by which only the worst “ kind ” of “ foul 
spirit” goeth out. And thus the healthy air circu- 
lates, and the world is kept sweet, by light and 
fragance, and by salt and fire. 

Clapham held meetings, and brought bills into 
Parliament, and subscribed tens and hundreds of 
thousands, and from its suburban Paradises not 
only “ visited” the prisons, but reformed them ; 
not only gave alms to the poor, but educated them 
out of poverty ; not only visited the sick, but 
healed them in hospitals and convalescent homes ; 
it allured congregations by the thousand and set 
them to work on the millions. 


586 AGAINST THE STREAM. 

And, meanwhile, in Persia Henry Martyn, 
sent forth from its midst, toiled, and preached and 
died, alone ; and left but one convert ; but in- 
spired countless other lives; 

My cousins married ; Harriet the “ Reformer ” 
a devoted . clergyman who lived and toiled in the 
missionary field, unpicturesque and illimitable, of 
the low districts of London ; Phoebe went to be 
the comfort of her husband’s country parish ; 
Matilda married a wealthy merchant, and admired 
and assisted other people’s excellent works to her 
heart’s content ; every one of them bearing with 
them, wherever they went, the sunshine and 
sweetness of that bright early home, from which 
little Martha had early passed away, leaving the 
most fragrant memory of all. 

And Amice and Herve Godefroy, with their 
Moravians, worked on also in their own place, not 
exactly prosperous, not growing at all rich, sorely 
tried often, often failing in health ; but sometimes 
overpaid with such rare, unutterable delights as 
only such service enfolds ; by seeing hearts that 
had seemed dead wake up, and live, and rejoice, 
and serve ; by seeing sufferings nobly borne and 
nobly avenged, evil conquered by good, — patient, 
faithful lives crowned by joyful death. 

Some of their slaves they emancipated and sent 
to the new free colony of Sierra Leone. And 
among the rest the labor proved, so far, not in vain, 
that at the general emancipation in 1832, the 
islands in which missionary work had been most 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


587 


encouraged, found themselves able to anticipate 
the period of apprenticeship, and to trust the slaves 
with immediate freedom. 

And then their work, as far as they could do 
it, was done. They had parted with their children 
long before, to be brought up in the bracing Eng- 
lish climate, away from the enervating influences, 
physical and moral, around them there. 

But they themselves stayed till the emancipa- 
tion. Having put their hands to the plough, they 
turned not back. 

And then at last they returned, and took a cot- 
tage on the hills near us, hoping that the vigor of 
the moorland air would restore the vigor they — 
but chiefly Captain Godefroy — had lost. 

Their reward was not visibly here ; except in- 
deed for that best reward of doing good work, and 
for the rare blessedness of that incomparable com- 
panionship of a perfect marriage during the years 
which they were given to spend together ; years, 
one of which had more life in it than many a life- 
time. 

Hot on the heights; low among the heavy- 
laden, helping them to bear the burdens, Amice 
had thought this the highest. And God gave her 
her highest ; I think also His highest, the place 
His highest took on earth. 

“ ¥e need not try to make life hard to our- 
selves,’’ Amice had once said, speaking of Clap- 
ham ; “ what are the little pin-pricks we can inflict 
on ourselves ? When God wounds, it is wound- 


588 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


ing; and we learn — learn to suffer as He suffered. 
And when he heals, it is healing ; and we learn 
more — learn in our measure to heal as He healed.” 
And so she found it — my Amice, our Amice, the 
treasure and the succor of us all. 

******** 

Twenty-five years from that abolition in 1807, 
through wars and adversity, and victory and peace, 
and again through new wars and new peace, that 
great anti-slavery conflict went steadfastly on, 
until, in 1832, the Yittoria, Leipzig, and Elba of 
the first war were succeeded by the Waterloo of 
the real final victory ; the twenty millions sterling 
freely given by England to redeem herself and 
Africa from the great wrong ; the banishment of 
the iniquity for ever from all lands over which 
England held sway. 

To the last the veteran leader, William Wilber- 
force, lived and fought on ; at the very last (by 
one of those weird repetitions of history which 
reads like the refrain of a dirge), like Pitt and Fox 
in the first campaigns of the war, dying, if not be- 
fore the victory was won, yet before the day of tri- 
umph dawned. And the whole House of Com- 
mons followed him to his grave in Westminster 
Abbey. 

The sixty years war was over ; once more, evil 
had been conquered by good. 

A conflict still, as we know, to be succeeded by 
other conflicts elsewhere, in the same cause ; never 


AGAINST THE STREAM. 


589 


indeed to be finished, until the iniquity shall be 
banished utterly from the world. 

And then, and then ? 

Other wrongs,, other slaveries, other warfares, 
other victories ; as long as the source of all wrongs 
and all bondage remains in man ; the great mystery 
of iniquity, beside which all else that we call dark- 
ness is penetrable, the awful liberty involved in 
the very power to love and to obey which must in- 
volve the possibility of the slavey of selfishness 
and disobedience. 

Patiently, for more than half a century, that 
great anti-slavery struggle went on ; the “ moral 
atmosphere,” which we call public opinion, slowly 
clearing and becoming healthy in the only way in 
which “ moral atmospheres ” ever do clear and be- 
come healthy ; not by any volcanic irresistible con- 
vulsion, as of the elements ; nor by slow inevitable 
diffusion, as of the seasons ; but by a strenuous 
keeping or restoring of the sanitary laws ; by a la- 
borious clearing and planting, and embanking, and 
draining away of everything that causes malaria ; 
by a few brave and patient men, often at first by only 
one, refusing to drift smoothly along with the evil 
current of the times, but pulling resolutely Against 
the Stream. 


THE END. 


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